Kansas was five days away from becoming the second state in the Midwest to liberalize abortion laws. Formerly, the law had allowed abortion only as a means to save the mother’s life. New statutes would allow abortion under three conditions: Risk to the mother’s physical or mental health; evidence that the child would be born with physical or mental defects; or evidence that the pregnancy resulted from criminal assault or incest. An unidentified doctor was quoted as being in favor of the new law, saying, “I think we have a whole generation of unwanted children — hippies, Yippies, drug addicts, outcasts. They’re just not with society and I think they were unwanted pregnancies, generally. I think we should do something about this.”

A county official said that the campaign to Rid Douglas County of Marijuana (RDOM) (see Old Home Town for June 18) was a waste of time and money, since the local variety of hemp plant had “absolutely no active principle. The people who get on high on this stuff have a good imagination. It smells like the other marijuana, I presume, but then so does alfalfa.”

Bids were scheduled to be opened on July 7 for the construction of a $10 million Kresge warehouse facility in northwest Lawrence.