To the editor:

The Kansas Legislature last Friday: “You can’t make us wear masks during a pandemic. Don’t tell us what to do with our bodies.”

Also the Kansas Legislature last Friday: “We approve a complete and total ban on abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, and when the mother’s life is in danger.”

You want a choice about your body. I want a choice about mine.

The abortion ban that the Kansas Legislature is rushing to approve is an outrageous level of control over women’s bodies in this state. The legislators’ goal is to put it up for a statewide vote, but don’t be lulled into a sense of comfort by the vote: They want to put it up for voting in an August primary election instead of a November general election. Why, you ask? The primary elections in Kansas give conservatives about 3.5 times more voters than in the general elections. Their patriarchal control of women’s health care sits just fine with that set of voters, and they seem well aware that the rest of the state opposes it.

These same people who want “small government” when it comes to masking their faces and preventing the spread of a pandemic that has killed thousands of Kansans sure want a whole lot of government inside the doctors’ offices where women are. So, do Kansans have a choice about their own bodies, or not?

Emily Mulligan,

Lawrence