Finalist: Melinda Henneberger of The Kansas City Star

Hey Missouri, Margaret Atwood can’t keep up with you.

In the totalitarian Gilead of her novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the Commanders would appreciate the ingenuity of creating a whole spreadsheet of women’s menstrual cycles. So as to better protect them, of course.

As you’ve probably heard, the Missouri state health director, Dr. Randall Williams, testified this week at a hearing on revoking the license of the state’s last Planned Parenthood clinic that his department kept a spreadsheet on the menstrual periods of women who were patients there. This was to help the health department identify those who’d had complicated abortions. Put another way, it was to help them find something, anything, to justify closing the St. Louis facility.

So in the only state in the country that does not have a statewide opioid prescription database — no way, because that might invade the privacy of patients we’d literally rather allow to die — the health department is tracking who is bleeding again and who is not.

And in a state where the idea of a gun database is such a threat to the privacy of gun owners that it’s on a Hyperloop to nowhere, bureaucrats are rifling through medical records — and really, is there anything more private? — looking for ammunition against Planned Parenthood. Who says government bureaucracy is impersonal?

Williams, the same official who ordered Planned Parenthood to perform unnecessary pelvic exams, testified that the spreadsheet was used to suss out the fact that four patients who had come in for abortions had left still pregnant and had to come in for a second procedure.

Late Wednesday, the department said in a statement that Williams did not ask for, see or know anything about the spreadsheet, which was put together by regulators. It was referred to in an email as “Director’s request.” Wednesday’s statement said this was “an erroneous email subject line that both staff and sworn testimony has acknowledged is not accurate.”

Those “failed” abortions were cited as the reason the state has refused to renew the clinic’s license, at the same time the state has passed a controversial ban on all abortions performed after eight weeks, even in cases of rape and incest.

The spreadsheet was based on medical records a state investigator had access to during an annual inspection. It included medical identification numbers but not patients’ names.

Sometimes, we forget that abortion law is rooted in the right to privacy, but this spreadsheet has reminded us of that.

In his previous job in a similar position in North Carolina, before he was recruited by former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, Williams was accused by a state toxicologist of trying to “play down the risk” of coal ash contamination in drinking wells by rescinding a “do not drink” order.

In a deposition, Williams said he canceled those warnings because they were stirring up needless fears. Whereas in Missouri, his handiwork has exceeded our worst fears.

Recently, Missouri’s last abortion clinic caved to pressure from the state and began doing additional, and completely unnecessary, pelvic exams on women several days before an abortion.

Planned Parenthood is fighting for its life in this state, and gave in in an attempt to keep the lights on.

But the message the state was sending women with this extra — and in case you haven’t had one, painful — procedure was clear: Take that, sister. You deserve what the doctor just called that “little pinch.”

As a result, they seem to have caused the doctors administering these pointless probes real anguish.

And doctors at the St. Louis clinic are right to have announced that they’ll no longer be doing what one physician called “disrespectful and dehumanizing” exams at least 72 hours before an abortion, as required by a state health department regulation. They’re still doing the exams right before abortions.

Inflicting these exams for no medical reason surely violates the principle of “First, do no harm.” (And yes, we’re aware that the original version of the Hippocratic Oath did not use those exact words, but did include the promise, “I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.”)

While under existential threat is no time to abandon principle just when we need it most.

At a court hearing in St. Louis on Friday, the state may announce whether it will or will not renew the clinic’s license, which it allowed to lapse at the end of May, just days after Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed a near-total abortion ban into law.

Judge Michael Stelzer issued a preliminary injunction that’s keeping the clinic open for now.

State health department officials have cited safety concerns that include four “failed abortions.” Inspection records show that two of those women had to be hospitalized with complications, and one of them, who was terminating her pregnancy at 21 weeks, suffered “massive uncontrolled bleeding” — and lost two liters of blood.

As The Star has reported, Missouri also remains one of the most dangerous places in the industrialized world to give birth. And since the number of total abortions performed in the time frame under scrutiny is unknown, it’s hard to put that in context.

It’s the state’s job to assure safety, but years of harassment have made us skeptical that that’s what this is about. It’s the clinic’s job to protect its patients, and that’s what its doctors are doing by defying the state regulation imposing needless exams.

St. Louis ob-gyn Amy Addante tweeted this week about the real-world effect of the requirements being imposed on patients and doctors at the last clinic performing abortions in Missouri.

“Today,” the doctor wrote, “I was forced by the state of Missouri to perform an unnecessary pelvic exam on a patient terminating her pregnancy for a fetal anomaly. She is heartbroken over her situation, and I was forced to do an invasive, uncomfortable exam. It broke me as a physician to do this to her.”

To her, not for her. Not for any medical reason, but to keep the clinic open, at least for now.

This harassment by the state is not to be confused with Missouri’s new ban on abortions performed after the eighth week of pregnancy, with no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. That law is scheduled to take effect on Aug. 28.

This is part of a licensing dispute and is not a “pro-life issue at all,” according to Gov. Mike Parson. You can say that again.

St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the state Department of Health and Senior Services from revoking the license of the Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis.

Meanwhile, the state alleges that the clinic is unsafe for women, and Planned Parenthood answers that no, it’s the state that’s increasingly unsafe for women.

Dr. Randall Williams, an obstetrician and the director of the state health department, told NPR he had “concerns about standard of care and policy” at the sole surviving clinic.

A news release issued by his department says that a March inspection found “failed surgical abortions” after which patients remained pregnant, a lack of “informed consent” and “at least one incident in which patient safety was gravely compromised.”

If any one of those things were true, it would be serious. But if even one were true, don’t you think we’d have heard all about it in the three months since that inspection? The credibility of the state in this matter is not robust, but we look forward to hearing these assertions backed up in court.

In his previous job in a similar position in North Carolina, Williams got into trouble for downplaying risk to public health.

Before disgraced former Gov. Eric Greitens decided that Williams was just the man for the job in Missouri, he was accused by a state toxicologist in North Carolina of trying to “play down the risk” of coal ash contamination in drinking wells by rescinding a “do not drink” order.

In a deposition, Williams said he canceled those warning notices because they were stirring up needless fears. Now he’s imposing needless procedures.

“Only on May 22,” his department’s news release said, “did Planned Parenthood change their previous position and agree to comply with Missouri regulations which require pelvic exams at the screening prior to abortions so that information learned from the pelvic exams could increase the safety of the procedure.

On May 28, only after filing their lawsuit did Planned Parenthood again change another previous position to comply with Missouri law that the same physician who does the preoperative counseling will also perform the abortion.”

“The unprecedented refusal by Planned Parenthood to fully cooperate as they have in the past heightens our regulators’ concerns about what their investigation has revealed to date.”

Again, if there are women who went to that clinic for an abortion and walked out still pregnant, or who got abortions they never consented to, why are state officials nattering about a failure to do an unnecessary pelvic exam or to have the same doctor who delivered the state-imposed lecture also perform the procedure?

And what is the point of that latter requirement, if not to make it impossible to get an abortion in Missouri by any means?

Dr. Colleen McNicholas, of St. Louis Planned Parenthood, put it this way in a statement: “Missouri Governor Parson’s inspections process has become just another vehicle to intimidate doctors like me and to push abortion care out of reach for patients.”

The ob-gyn in charge of our state health department is in effect telling women to have a nice glass of coal ash and call him in the morning.

Under the almost total abortion ban the Missouri Senate passed in the middle of the night — and no, that’s not a figure of speech — not even an adolescent victim of rape, incest or human trafficking could end a pregnancy after eight weeks.

Doctors violating the ban, even in these frightening circumstances, could go to prison for up to 15 years.

This 3 a.m. assault on both process and people still has to pass the House, as it has before.

But Gov. Mike Parson can’t wait to sign this legislation, which would do real harm to real Missourians. “This pro-life administration will not back down,” he said.

Republican state Sen. Bob Onder did yell from the floor, “We should be ashamed at ourselves of what we are doing today!”

But his point was that the bill did not go far enough. He wanted a fetal heartbeat bill, which would have been slightly more restrictive, and said later that instead of calling it the “Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act,” the “Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act Sort of Kind Of,” would be more accurate.

It does allow abortion in the event of a medical emergency.

But the result of the Senate’s all-nighter is certainly clarifying: Let no one say they don’t know up to what point human life is valued by the GOP majority. The voiceless and vulnerable still in utero? Yes. The voiceless and vulnerable abused seventh grader? No.

Republicans often say that government shouldn’t pick winners and losers, but women in crisis would lose if this bill becomes law. Government should get off our backs, but other perches are OK.

Every Republican in the Missouri Senate voted yes, and every Democrat voted no. We don’t know how this will end, either legally or politically, but do know that this race to the most extreme possible position can only leave us as a people more divided and defended.

Missouri now joins Alabama, Georgia, Ohio and Kentucky in the competition to challenge the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision before the anti-abortion Supreme Court that Donald Trump promised and has delivered.

Already, only one clinic in the state performs abortions.

But conservatives were taking no chances in making sure that one closes, too: One activist even posted the cellphone numbers of Republican leaders and asked the like-minded to pressure them not to compromise in any way. She needn’t have worried.

Police and prosecutors in Lawrence have a staggering amount to learn about sexual assault.

In theory, investigating such reports is part of their job. But do they even know what rape is?

Angela Garza told The Star that when she reported to Lawrence police that her ex-boyfriend had raped her multiple times while they were still together in 2016, the officer who took her report told her that “since it was a relationship, it means it was consensual.”

No, it doesn’t. Laws on spousal rape began to change in the ‘70s. By 1993, marital rape was illegal in every state in the country.

One University of Kansas student who reported being raped said a Lawrence police officer told her that sexual assaults happen when women in college “experiment.” Police finally contacted her alleged assailant — seven months later.

It’s bad enough that even multiple reports against the same man don’t necessarily result in an arrest in this major college town, where a KU guest lecturer accused of three sexual assaults was never charged.

But given the epic failures of this department and of the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office on this front, maybe those women who say they were given the very latest in advice from the 1800s should be glad they weren’t arrested, like the KU law student who was wrongly charged with filing a false rape report.

And how are they ever going to do better when they don’t acknowledge any problem?

“The Lawrence Police Department takes alleged crimes of a sexual nature very seriously,” spokesperson Amy Rhoads wrote in an email. The department, she wrote, “is firmly committed to assisting the survivors of sexual assault.”

Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson at least seems prepared, however belatedly and grudgingly, to acknowledge that change is in order.

But then, Branson charged at least three women with filing a false rape report in just the last two years. And he only dropped two of those cases recently, after The Star asked about them.

No wonder KU law professor Suzanne Valdez has concluded that “Women aren’t safe here. Police aren’t protecting women, the DA’s not protecting women.”

How tragic — criminal, really — that she feels a responsibility to tell women to report, but not to “expect anyone to believe you because that’s not what’s going to happen.”

Branson told The Star that it’s important to prosecute false rape reports because when “we find instances of cases where we believe that somebody has made a false report that could have horrendous consequences to another party, we have to take those things very seriously.”

Wrongful convictions in rape cases almost never come from false reporting, but from inaccurate identifications in attacks by strangers. And of course, there are relatively few such cases.

Branson still seems more interested in pursuing mythical false rape reports than real rapes.

“Regret’s a big issue for juries” in rape cases, he told The Star. “They’re going, ‘Well, you know, maybe she’s upset now that this has occurred, but it was OK at the time.’ And so those are really hard concepts for juries to sort out and figure out. Juries don’t like these cases.”

It’s his job to help juries figure out hard concepts. But first, he’d to understand those concepts himself, and it’s still not clear that he does.

Douglas County prosecutors can’t properly investigate the University of Kansas student they’ve charged with falsely reporting a rape without also fully investigating the underlying rape allegation.

Yet they say they see no reason to have her rape kit tested.

The results wouldn’t prove consent, they say.

But if that were the full story, why ever test rape kits in cases where the suspect doesn’t dispute that there was sexual contact?

Answer: Because testing can tell us a lot, including the extent of any injuries, whether a suspect and victim’s testimony match the evidence, and whether the suspect’s DNA turns up in any other rape kits, now or years from now. That Douglas County authorities don’t have a sample to test it against just shows they didn’t do much of an investigation.

Their well-worn theory is that this was a woman scorned, having revenge sex with a friend of her former boyfriend and then reporting him to police to avoid embarrassment. (Note: This is not a known effect of reporting a rape to police.)

The “proof” is text messages she sent immediately after the alleged rape that minimized and made light of what happened. These messages aren’t in keeping with investigators’ idea of how a real rape victim would behave.

But minimizing and normalizing and trying to tell yourself, “That did not just happen” is very much what rape victims do; it’s the brain’s way of responding to trauma. If authorities in Lawrence don’t know that, they need to get some remedial training, and soon.

If this young woman really is making one of the tiny percentage of false rape claims, that will come out, she will be harshly punished, and victims and their advocates will decry all of the damage she’s done.

But there’s no way to prove that’s the case without looking a lot further into her allegations than authorities seem to be willing to do. Their lack of interest in testing the rape kit is not just the wrong call, but one that sends a clear, and clearly callous, message to all victims.

“We don’t care if the thing is tested,” said District Attorney Charles Branson, since such “kits in cases of consensual sexual encounters usually do nothing for prosecution or defense. Any type of bruising or hemorrhage or anything like that in a sexual assault exam, those artifacts, bruising and hemorrhaging, can be there with normal consensual intercourse.”

“Usually” isn’t the same as “always,” and Branson’s indifference to learning all of the facts in this case can’t fill any victim at KU or in Douglas County with confidence.

Douglas County prosecutors don’t want the public — or a jury — to see texts sent by the man accused of rape by the KU law student who’s been charged with making a false report.

Which naturally makes us wonder what’s in those texts that they seem so afraid would hurt their case.

Ditto for the evidence pertaining to the man’s character, reputation and any past allegations that prosecutors want kept off-limits. His “character is not in issue,” the motion filed in court on Thursday says.

Instead, “what is in issue is specific conduct” on the night in September of 2018 when he says he had consensual rough sex with his classmate, who had been seeing a friend of his. She says she came out of a blackout covered with bruises, and we do know that her injuries were documented by the nurses who did a rape exam the next day.

The texts he sent that night would seem to be very much be at issue. At a preliminary hearing, Lawrence Police Detective Charles Cottengim testified about those messages.

Defense attorney Branden Bell asked, “Do you recall him stating his preference or his intent to sleep with (his friend’s sometime girlfriend) that night?”

“Yes,” Cottengim said, “there were messages.”

“Immediately after he talks about how f---ed up she is?”

“Yes.”

“And saying how he’s going to do it just to show (his friend) that he can?”

“Yes.”

If found guilty of making a false report at a trial scheduled to start on Oct. 28, she could spend almost six years behind bars.

Prosecutors also want a gag order placed on her and her defense attorneys.

The motion, filed by Chief Assistant District Attorney Eve Kemple, said this is because “the state has a right to a fair trial.”

But so does the accused, Counselor. And the problem with your arguments in this motion, as with the case as a whole, is that you can’t prove she was lying without proving she wasn’t raped, and you can’t prove she wasn’t raped without investigating whether she was raped. This would seem to entail a look into the background of the man whom Cottengim testified police took at his word that he had done nothing wrong.

The Lawrence police by their own admission never investigated the woman’s report. Instead, they looked at her cellphone, saw texts she had written minimizing the situation while she was still in it — and still under the influence — and concluded on the spot that she was lying. They only interviewed the man who she says raped her as part of their investigation against her.

In a statement, her defense attorneys said, “Our client has a right to respond to allegations that the prosecutor has publicly aired, including the accusation that she fabricated the allegation of rape.” The jury should get to see the “he said” as well as the “she said” before they decide who is and is not lying.

The Kansas City Chiefs knew Tyreek Hill’s history of domestic violence when they signed him. That was a controversial decision, and one that doesn’t seem to have helped him or his family.

And if he did break his 3-year-old son’s arm, the team needs to break it off with him now, no matter how fast he is.

Even as one of the best wide receivers in the game, this can’t be the way the Chiefs want to win, right?

The team’s Super Bowl hopes cannot depend on tolerating the kind of abuse he’s been charged with before.

The Star reported that the Overland Park Police Department is investigating a battery incident involving Hill. A child is listed as the victim.

Hill had not been charged with a crime as of Friday afternoon.

Hill’s fiancee, Crystal Espinal, is listed under “others involved.” A source familiar with the investigation told The Star that the victim is Hill’s son with Espinal, and that his arm was broken in the incident. Espinal is pregnant with twins.

When she was eight weeks pregnant with their 3-year-old, he reportedly punched and choked her, and as a result was arrested and dismissed from the Oklahoma State team.

He was the Big 12 Newcomer of the Year.

But a police report said that Espinal, whose face was covered with cuts and bruises, told investigators that he had pinned her to the wall and thrown her to the floor like a “rag doll,” then picked her up by her hair, put her in a headlock and sat on her while he punched her in the stomach.

The Oklahoma State coach told reporters at the time that he had to let him go, because “there’s just certain things right now that society frowns upon.”

But is frowning enough?

In August of 2015, Hill pleaded guilty to domestic assault and battery by strangulation and received three years probation.

The Chiefs got Hill in the fifth round of the 2016 NFL Draft. He did get therapy, and early in his time here, promised fans that “I’m going to be a better man, be a better citizen and everything will just take care of itself and let God do the rest.”

Unfortunately, all too often that’s not how domestic violence ends. And if Hill’s history has repeated itself, his involvement with the Chiefs has to end here.

Kansas City Chiefs star Tyreek Hill and his fianceé, Crystal Espinal, would now — according to his attorney, anyway — seem to agree that the wide receiver has never been anything but loving to their 3-year-old son, who has been removed from their home.

Maybe he’s the model dad his lawyer describes. But if he’s not, why would she cover for him? We can think of millions of reasons, but the most important of those have nothing to do with money.

The things both Hill and Espinal said in a conversation she secretly recorded, about the way Hill treats their child? Espinal made it all up; she was essentially leading the witness, according to the letter his lawyer sent the NFL on Thursday. And Hill, taken aback by allegations he was hearing for the first time, was too floored to protest.

When she told him their little boy was terrified of him, and he answered, “You need to be terrified of me, too, dumb b----,” well, who knows what came over him.

“That comment is inexcusable, of course, and he wouldn’t ask me to defend that here,” Hill’s attorney, N. Trey Pettlon, wrote to the NFL.

Of course.

The Tyreek Hill presented by his attorney is otherwise unfailingly kind and respectful. “There have been occasions when Tyreek has tapped his son gently on the chest with his fingers, while his son was crying and said, ‘man up, buddy’ or ‘don’t cry, my man.’ He has said that in a calm voice trying to redirect him.”

They play superheroes and laugh a lot. It’s Espinal who is the disciplinarian, and who is at fault.

Hill, meanwhile, “is committed to improving his life and becoming the best parent he can be,” Pettlon wrote.

“I love and support my family above everything,” Hill said in a statement released by his attorneys. “My son’s health and happiness is my number one priority.”

The Hill in Pettlon’s letter is only in counseling because he so regrets what he said to Espinal on that one occasion, when she happened to have been taping him. Otherwise, what has he done that your average role model wouldn’t?

Presenting Hill in the best possible light is his job as the player’s legal defender, and he’s doing that job well.

But if Espinal is in fact absorbing all blame, and shielding him from the consequences of his own violence, that wouldn’t be irrational or out of nowhere. Nor is Hill’s potential payday the only possible motivation.

We know she has been abused, because Hill has pleaded guilty to doing her serious harm in 2014. Women in abusive relationships are in even more physical danger when a partner loses his job, as Hill very well might. They are in more danger when pregnant, too; intimate partner violence is the leading cause of female homicide and injury-related deaths during pregnancy.

No one has to tell Espinal, who is expecting twins, about the stats on that: When she was eight weeks pregnant with their son, Hill was arrested and charged with punching and strangling her.

A police report noted at the time that Espinal, whose face was covered with cuts and bruises during the interview, told investigators that Hill had pinned her to the wall and thrown her to the floor like a “rag doll,” then picked her up by her hair, put her in a headlock and sat on her while he punched her in the stomach. After pleading guilty, he was given three years of probation.

On March 15, The Star reported that a source familiar with the situation said an incident at Hill’s home had left their boy with a broken arm. “Why does (he) say, ‘Daddy did it?” Espinal asked Hill in the recording that KCTV-5 obtained and aired last week. “A 3-year-old is not going to lie about what happened to his arm.”

In his letter, Pettlon said the boy’s broken arm was an accident, and suggested that Hill never hurt him at any other time, either.

“Crystal you know I didn’t cause any bruising or harm to (him),” Hill texted Espinal, according to Pettlon’s letter to the NFL.

Hill’s lawyer said Espinal responded this way: “I know you didn’t. I did. I hurt (him). I’m the one that did it. I was hurt and mad at you so I blamed you for everything.”

Maybe that’s true, and maybe that’s desperation and fear talking. Pettlon’s letter says that, “As an aside, it seems clear from the audio that Ms. Espinal is not in fact terrified of Tyreek.” No, it doesn’t.

And whether his client continues to play football, here or anywhere, is the least of what’s at stake.