OLATHE — The state has put a “thumb on the scale against abortion,” attorney Alice Wang said Tuesday in arguments for a temporary injunction to block long-standing abortion restrictions in Kansas.
Over the span of 90 minutes in Johnson County District Court, Wang, an attorney from the Center for Reproductive Rights, and her opponent, Denise Harle of Alliance Defending Freedom, argued the constitutionality of the “Women’s Right to Know Act,” legislation that uses medically inaccurate information to dictate abortion restrictions.
“No one has been OK with these laws,” Wang said. “The fact that plaintiff providers have been bending over backwards and engaging in Herculean efforts to try and comply with the laws so that they can still provide quality reproductive health care to their patients doesn’t make the laws any more constitutional.”
The lawsuit, filed by abortion providers June 6, challenges requirements in the law, such as a mandatory ultrasound, a 30-minute wait period before the abortion procedure, a requirement that a physician has to listen to the fetus’ heartbeat and offer the patient the chance to do so as well, and a mandate that certain paperwork has to be given to patients in printed form, in specific typeface, font size and color, at least 24 hours in advance of an abortion.
Another challenged section of the law requires providers to post inaccurate information on their websites and in clinics that abortions could increase risk of breast cancer and premature birth in the future — a claim not supported by scientific research.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach said the law was a “common sense measure.”
“The Women’s Right to Know Act has been in place for more than 20 years and has been an important part of ensuring informed consent before any abortions are performed,” Kobach said in a news release after the day’s arguments. “We’re confident that the court will uphold this common sense statute.”
Plaintiffs in the case say the restrictions are a violation of the state constitution and patients’ right to reproductive health care. Among others, plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Herbert Hodes and Traci Lynn Nauser. The board-certified obstetrician-gynecologists’ challenge of a different state law led to the Kansas Supreme Court’s landmark 2019 ruling that the right to bodily autonomy in the Kansas Constitution includes the right to terminate a pregnancy.
Defendants in the new case include Kobach, Johnson County District Attorney Stephen Howe, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett, and Susan Gile and Ronald Varner, officials from the Kansas Board of Healing Arts.
Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said the landscape following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, as well as a new state law requiring doctors to tell patients about a medically unsound “abortion reversal,” made the lawsuit necessary.
Following last year’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, states with abortion access have dwindled, making Kansas an outlier in the region. Kansas law allows abortions up to 22 weeks after gestation, and in cases where the mother’s life is in danger.
Kansas voters in August 2022 defeated a constitutional amendment to take away the right to abortion.
Abortion numbers in the state have skyrocketed in the year since federal abortion protections were overturned, with record numbers of out-of-state travelers coming to Kansas clinics.
Wales estimated providers in her organization have had to turn away 2-10 people every day because of bureaucratic form requirements, including patients who come in with the wrong font color on their forms.
Wales said the organization used to be able to reschedule patients, but with new volume and few providers, clinics are now forced to turn women away.
