The debate over an extensive anti-abortion bill has moved from the halls of the Statehouse to Gov. Sam Brownback's Facebook page and Senate President Steve Morris' email inbox.

Borrowing a page from the playbook of their counterparts in Virginia, a pair of Kansas abortion rights activists requested advice about their menstrual cycles on Brownback's page Thursday as a sarcastic way of protesting the Legislature's continued involvement in abortion.

Nicki Scheid, a member of the National Organization for Women's Wichita branch, said she saw the first post from Jennifer Weishaar, an activist from Lawrence that she knew through cyberspace, and quickly decided to add one of her own.

"Sometimes the only way you can really show the absurdity of some of this stuff is to be absurd yourself," Scheid said Monday. "If you have a bunch of lawmakers who think they're doctors, maybe we should ask them questions like this."

Weishaar and Scheid said they are particularly concerned about a provision in the Kansas bill that limits the legal action a woman can take against a doctor who identifies fetal abnormalities during her pregnancy but doesn’t tell her about them.

Weishaar said she made her initial post after attending a "Voices for Choice" rally and it came partly out of frustration with Brownback for pledging to sign any anti-abortion bill that reaches his desk.

"If he's so concerned about what's going on in my uterus, then I'm going to tell him," Weishaar said Monday.

Their comments were noticed by Kansas NOW director Kari Ann Rinker, who spread the word to an abortion-rights website called RH Reality Check and soon the governor's page was swamped with tongue-in-cheek and occasionally graphic anatomy and social questions. Some of them were later featured on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show."

"I just called your office, and they wouldn’t let me schedule a pap smear," read one of the postings. "I’m confused, aren’t you taking care of all this now?"

The governor's spokeswoman, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, declined to comment on the Facebook postings, except to say that the governor carefully reads and considers each bill that comes to his desk and would do the same for the abortion bill, which has passed a committee and is on its way to the House.

Many of the posts came from Facebook users in other states and some have disappeared into the Internet ether, deleted either by Facebook or automated filters set to weed out certain words related to sexual activities.

Jones-Sontag said the governor's staff deleted only one posting, which included a pornographic picture that was a violation of Facebook community standards.

A day after the posts began appearing, a group called Catholic Vote urged its Facebook followers to respond.

"Pro-abortion zealots are bombarding the Facebook wall of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback because he's supporting common sense pro-life legislation," the group said. "Why don't we show some support for the courageous stance of this great pro-life governor by writing on his Facebook wall?"

Rinker said social media blitzes like the one now under way in Kansas influenced the legislative debate in Virginia, where the movement was galvanized by a proposal to require a transvaginal ultrasound before abortions.

That provision isn’t in the Kansas bill. Called the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion" bill by supporters, it seeks to ensure the state doesn't subsidize abortions indirectly through tax credits or deductions, but it also has several nonfiscal provisions.

The University of Kansas has raised concerns that the bill might jeopardize its accreditation by stripping its obstetrics and gynecology residents of access to abortion training. The anti-abortion group Kansans for Life, one of the driving forces behind the bill, says there is no danger to the accreditation because of conscience protections.

The national opposition has focused mostly on provisions in the bill that govern what doctors tell women about their pregnancies — and what they are legally allowed to leave out.

The ACLU described that portion of the bill as a license to lie and urged its members to email Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton.

"Is that where all of those (emails) came from?" Morris asked Monday morning. "We've got about 10,000 of them."

One of his aides then notified him that the total was closer to 12,000. Morris said his assistant, Jamie Lane, was in the process of combing through all the form letters, which Morris said aren’t necessarily the most effective lobbying tool.