Planned Parenthood, other abortion providers challenge Kansas anti-abortion law

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV/WIBW) - Abortion providers across Kansas are challenging the statewide requirements in place for patients seeking abortions. Three providers, Planned Parenthood Great Plains, Hodes and Nauser Women’s Health and the Center for Reproductive Rights, are asking the court to prohibit the enforcement of anti-abortion measures, filing a lawsuit against the state yesterday.

The “Women’s Right to Know Act” put in place a 24-hour waiting period, requires women seeking abortions to undergo a mandatory ultrasound and listen to the fetus’s heartbeat 30 minutes before the procedure and fill out a 24-hour consent form which “does not necessarily reflect current medical opinion.” Parts of the law were enacted as far back as 1997.

Abortion remains legal in Kansas until the 22-week limit thanks to a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court ruling which established abortion as a fundamental right in the state’s constitution. A 2022 primary vote added further security to the legality of the procedure when Kansans overwhelmingly rejected an amendment to the state’s constitution that would have banned or restricted abortion.

But the Republican-controlled state Legislature passed a number of anti-abortion laws this year – despite Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto attempts – restricting access to abortion. The most recent addition to the “Women’s Right to Know Act” requires physicians to inform patients that mifepristone, a common type of medication abortion, is reversible, though the method is highly contested among health care providers.

A lawsuit filed in Johnson County yesterday by the state’s top abortion providers against Attorney General Kris Kobach and other state officials directly challenges the above measures, alleging they are “absurd and invasive” while “requiring patients to be bombarded with medically inaccurate information” from providers. The providers also argued mandatory waiting periods are insulting to patients, insinuating they have not thought out the decision well enough.

“It singles out abortion care for medically unnecessary additional regulation that delays and impedes access to abortion, stigmatizes and demeans people seeking abortion and perpetrates the discriminatory view that pregnant people are uniquely in need of the State’s paternalistic intervention into their health care and family planning decisions,” the lawsuit reads.

Anti-abortion advocates, like Kansans For Life, called the suit a profit-driven attack on women’s rights.

“With today’s lawsuit, the profit-driven abortion industry has launched an unprecedented attack on a woman’s right to informed consent before an abortion is performed on her,” said Danielle Underwood, KFL Director of Communications. “Not only are they seeking to remove access to information that many women have deemed essential to this life-altering decision, they’re aggressively working to speed up the decision-making process, seemingly forcing women into abortion without discussion of alternatives.”

Other anti-abortion measures passed this year include a law which criminalizes abortion providers if they do not provide care to infants “born alive” during an abortion, though medical professionals have insisted that an abortion rarely if ever results in a live birth.

The lawsuit will likely travel to the Kansas Supreme Court who heard additional anti-abortion arguments in March.

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