Trust Women and other Kansas clinics have played an outsized role in treating abortion patients from states with bans. The clinic’s new board president says she hopes a pause in services will be “very temporary.”
Kansas abortion providers have challenged an abortion survey law less than a month after lawmakers overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.
Planned Parenthood Great Plains is expanding in Kansas in the face of immense demand for abortions in the state, driven by a surge of people traveling from states with abortion bans.
Gov. Laura Kelly has vetoed legislation that would have opened up a pathway for child support claims to be made on behalf of fetuses, calling it an attempt to “take more control over women.”
Republican lawmakers passed measures that will force abortion patients to report more information to state officials, make it easier to prosecute people for coercing someone to get an abortion and allot more money to anti-abortion counseling centers.
Limited by the state’s constitutional protection of abortion, Kansas anti-abortion lawmakers have funneled more money into a program encouraging women to give birth, among other such focused measures sent to the governor.
Senate Republicans say 11 questions proposed to survey pregnant people in the state before they can receive an abortion will help lawmakers make better decisions. Critics say the proposed survey is overly invasive, offensive and a blatant attempt to push an anti-abortion agenda.
The House Federal and State Affairs Committee heard testimony on a bill creating a felony of coercion for persuading someone to terminate a pregnancy against their will and a bill designed to funnel $5.8 million into efforts to pressure women not to terminate a pregnancy.
Kansas is one of the few states left in the region that protects abortion rights. Unable to change state constitutional protections, some lawmakers are now doing their best to discourage abortion through a slew of legislation instead.
House and Senate Republicans — in their latest attempts to weaken the state’s constitutional right to bodily autonomy — have introduced legislation to require prison time for coercing a pregnant person into getting an abortion and to mandate ultrasounds before terminating a pregnancy.
