Court Blocks Kansas Law Shutting Down Abortion Clinics (Time.com)

By KAREN BALL / KANSAS CITY, KAN. Karen Ball / Kansas City, Kan. – Sat Jul 2, 1:30 am ET

Kansas' efforts to shut down two abortion providers will have to wait as a federal judge temporarily blocked the state Friday from imposing tough new licensing restrictions.

U.S. District Judge Carlos Murguia, reading from the bench, issued a preliminary injunction, saying providers and women would suffer "irreparable" injury if the regulations took effect Friday as scheduled. The injunction will hold until a trial determines the legality over rules that, among other things, mandate the size of janitors' closets and require lockers for patients.

"This is a tremendous victory," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented a father-daughter team from Overland Park, Kan. who had been denied a license. (See TIME's special report on women's health.)

"The facts were clear," said Northup, "this licensing process had absolutely nothing to do with patient health or safety and everything to do with political shenanigans."

One other clinic, Aid for Women in Kansas City Kan., will also be able to reopen its doors. Planned Parenthood, after purchasing a "neo-natal crash unit" that it said was unnecessary, was able to meet the licensing requirements at the last-minute on Thursday. If not for the judge's Friday order, that clinic would have been the only provider left in the state.

Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, says it was never the law's intent to shut down abortion clinics and notes that although South Carolina has a similar law, clinics there have survived. Abortion providers are "putting on a show," she says. "They're the ones who said if you make abortion legal, we'll keep women safe," she says. "Why wouldn't you want rooms big enough to get gurneys in and out of?"

But supporters of abortion rights said the Kansas law was part of a coordinated national campaign to chip away at a woman's right to reproductive freedom. "More like hack away," said Northup.

"Since the November elections," added Tait Sye of the national Planned Parenthood office in New York, "we've gone through the greatest legislative assault on women's health in a generation."

If the new regulations in Kansas are ultimately upheld, Planned Parenthood said its services will be strained. About 8,000 women a year seek abortions in Kansas; Planned Parenthood performed about 5,000 of them last year, the other two providers handling 3,000. That likely includes a large number of patients from across the state line, where Missouri already has tough restrictions in place and there are no clinics in the urban core of Kansas City. (See why Kansas tried to shut down abortion clinics.)

Dr. Herbert Hodes, who filed suit with his daughter, says abortion is just one of the services he and his daughter provide in their private ob-gyn practice. He delivers babies at nearby hospitals and performs other procedures, like tubal ligations, in his office. He says there's no reason to mandate patient lockers - he notes that hospitals usually just put a patient's belongings in a bag under the gurney when they go from pre-op to surgery to recovery.

"It's a joke and a sham," Hodes told TIME. "The only purpose is to shut down access to abortions." He says he complies with rules from the Kansas Board of Healing Arts and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists since "they're realistic regulations drawn up by doctors for doctors. We all know how much legislators know about health care for women - nothing," Hodes says.

Kansas legislators have tried to implement similar regulations before but gained traction only with the election of the conservative Brownback. Kansas is also one of the states where lawmakers are trying to block funding for Planned Parenthood. The state has long been a hotbed for the abortion issue; it's where Dr. George Tiller, who famously offered late-term abortions in Wichita, was murdered in 2009.

Jeff Pederson of Aid for Women echoes Hodes' complaints about unnecessary regulations, saying that one of the new codes mandates a two-hour recovery period. He says that when he accompanied his father to get his teeth pulled, his dad was sedated, yet they left 10 minutes after the procedure was complete. "The women don't want to stay here two hours, and they don't need to. They have a caregiver with them. They're drunk, but they're walking."

The majority of Pederson's clients are low-income or minorities, he says, and he fears folks will go back to pre–Roe v. Wade days of seeking home remedies or other means to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. "I can remember what it was like before."

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Judge blocks testimony from Casey Anthony fianc� (Reuters)

ORLANDO, Fla (Reuters) – The former fiancA© of accused child killer Casey Anthony testified on Tuesday that she claimed she once woke up to find her older brother standing over her, staring at her while she slept.

Judge Belvin Perry called Jesse Grund's testimony impermissible hearsay evidence, and said he won't allow the jury to hear it unless defense lawyers persuade him otherwise with sufficient legal arguments.

Grund said Casey told him about her experience with her brother after Grund asked her why she didn't want her daughter Caylee to be around Lee Anthony.

Prosecutors say Casey, 25, smothered 2-year-old Caylee on June 16, 2008 so that she could "live the good life" free of the demands of motherhood. They say Casey stored the child's body in her car trunk, then dumped it in woods near her home.

Defense attorney Jose Baez told jurors in his opening statement that Caylee accidentally drowned in the Florida family's backyard pool, and the death went unreported.

Baez said Casey was sexually abused, and that explained why she partied and seemed inappropriately carefree after her daughter's death.

But Baez has yet to produce evidence of the alleged abuse during Casey's murder trial, now in its sixth week.

Casey's father, George Anthony, has denied molesting her. Earlier this month, Perry scolded Baez when he asked a witness whether Lee could be Caylee's father.

Much of the testimony on Tuesday came from Roy Kronk, the water department meter reader who discovered Caylee's remains in a swampy part of a wooded area near the Anthony home in the Orlando area.

Kronk said he called the sheriff's department three times in August 2008 to report he found what looked like a small skull.

At the time, a nationwide search was underway to find Caylee, who Casey claimed was kidnapped by a nanny. Special phone lines were created to handle the thousands of tips and leads sent to authorities.

But detectives were zeroing in on Casey, who they knew had lied extensively about Caylee's disappearance.

Kronk said no one took him seriously until December 11, 2008, when he stopped at the location again and verified the object was in fact a skull. His supervisor alerted authorities, who arrived at the site and found Caylee's remains.

MAJOR DISCOVERY

Kronk is a key witness for the defense. Baez has insinuated that Kronk played some sort of role in the disposal of Caylee's body. The lawyer told jurors Kronk had sole "control" of Caylee's remains during the intervening four months and claimed he was motivated by a $225,000 reward.

However, the reward money was offered to anyone who found Caylee alive.

"I just simply tried to do the right thing," said Kronk, who noted he received $5,000 from the crime tip line.

Kronk testified he first spotted what looked like a skull on August 11, 2008 while taking a break with two co-workers, and called a crime tip line later that night to report the object.

Kronk said he called the Orange County Sheriff's Office again on the evening of August 12 and the morning of August 13 before finally getting deputies to meet him at the location.

Two deputies came but neither went into the woods nor asked him to show them the skull-like object, Kronk said.

One deputy walked as far as a flooded area, quickly looked from side to side, slipped on mud on his way back to the roadside, and then berated Kronk for 30 minutes for wasting his time, the meter reader testified.

Kronk's co-worker, David Dean, confirmed Kronk's account of discovering the skull. Within a few weeks, Dean testified, a tropical storm deluged the area with rain.

Prosecutors have suggested one reason no one saw the remains during subsequent searches in the area was because it was under water.

George Anthony took the stand briefly again on Tuesday, denying assertions by Baez that he had an affair with search volunteer Krystal Holloway. George testified he only went to Holloway's condominium to comfort her after learning she had cancer.

"I never had a romantic affair," George said.

He denied ever telling Holloway that "Caylee's death was an accident that snowballed out of control." He also said he never told her that he grabbed Casey by the throat, threw her against a wall and demanded Casey tell him where Caylee was.

"She (Holloway) is not a good person," George testified.

(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Jerry Norton)

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