NEWS FLASH

Kansas Spends Half A Million Dollars Defending Anti-Abortion Laws | The Kansas attorney general has dolled out more than half a million dollars to private law firms for defending anti-abortion laws the state enacted last year, the Associated Press reports. The attorney general’s office paid $317,000 to a private firm for “helping defend a budget provision denying federal family planning dollars for non-abortion services to Planned Parenthood,” spent almost $177,000 on a law imposing new restrictions on abortion providers and expensed $104,000 in tax payer dollars to defend “against a law restricting private insurance coverage for elective abortions.” Kansas faced a $493 million budget shortfall last year and to close the deficit, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) proposed $50 million in cuts to education programs.