Last Updated Apr 6, 2021 at 11:10 am ADT
Kansas City Star. April 5, 2021.
Editorial: Vaccine passports are a matter of Missouri getting back to normal, not politics
Gov. Mike Parson’s announced Thursday that he will not require Missourians to show they’ve been inoculated against COVID-19 with a “vaccine passport” meaning he’s deflecting the responsibility to keep people safe onto businesses and municipalities.
“If the private sector wants to do that, I’m fine with that,” Parson told reporters. “As far as the state goes, we won’t mandate vaccine passports.”
It sounds a lot like his refusal to issue a statewide mask mandate or take a definitive stance on when to close schools or businesses, even while COVID-19 infections were exploding across the state. In some parts of Missouri, masks were never required in public places. Parson took some heat for those decisions.
In the first piece of legislation he’s introduced in the U.S. Senate, Marshall is sponsoring a law that would keep COVID-19 relief dollars from funding abortions.
What, you didn’t know that any such dollars were funding abortions? They aren’t. And can’t, because the Hyde Amendment, first passed in 1976 and reenacted every year since, has kept federal funds from paying for abortions since 1980, when the amendment first went into effect after the Supreme Court ruled that such a ban was constitutional. Kansas also has multiple laws that prevent state funds from paying for abortions.
In other words, this is pure legislative theater from the OB-GYN from Great Bend.
Recent Kansas editorials
Question of the Day
The Kansas City Star, Jan. 15
Abortion opponents say Kansas is firmly pro-life. So why are they so intent on dodging the public will?
As the Kansas Legislature restarts last year’s effort to amend the state constitution to allow regulating abortion, amendment supporters again want to have the public vote on it during a low-turnout primary, this time in August 2022.
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It’s that curious insistence on avoiding a big November election turnout that derailed the amendment last year - when four Republican House members objected to the bill largely because of the attempt to sneak it through an August primary in the distracted days of summer.