State restrictions on abortion blocked by judge in Kansas
TOPEKA, Kan. — A Kansas judge on Monday put a new state law on medication abortions on hold and blocked older restrictions that for years have spelled out what providers must tell patients and forced patients to wait 24 hours to end their pregnancies.
The ruling was another big victory for abortion rights advocates in Kansas, where a statewide vote in August 2022 decisively confirmed protections for abortion access under the state constitution. District Judge K. Christopher Jayaram’s order suspends some restrictions that have been in effect for years. The waiting period had been in place since 1997.
“The Court has great respect for the deeply held beliefs on either side of this contentious issue,” Jayaram wrote in his 92-page order. “Nevertheless, the State’s capacity to legislate pursuant to its own moral scruples is necessarily curbed by the Kansas Constitution and its Bill of Rights.”
Jayaram’s order is set to remain in effect through the trial set for the end of June 2024 for a lawsuit filed by abortion providers, against state officials who would enforce abortion restrictions. The providers filed their case in Johnson County in the Kansas City area, home to two clinics that provide abortions.
“Each day these restrictions were in effect, we have been forced to turn away patients for reasons that are medically wrong and ethically unjustifiable,” said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which operates three Kansas clinics providing abortion services.
The legal battle highlights the importance of state courts in attempts to preserve access a little more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson ended protections under the U.S. Constitution and allowed states to ban abortion. In August, a judge in Texas ruled that the state’s ban was too restrictive, and the Utah Supreme Court heard arguments on whether it should lift a hold on a state law there banning most abortions.
“These kinds of informed consent laws reflect the long-standing will of the people of Kansas,” Caleb Dalton, senior counsel for the conservative group Alliance Defending Freedom, which is helping the state defend its anti-abortion laws, said in a statement. “Kansans are right to want to protect maternal health and safety and the lives of the unborn, and we will continue defending their interests.”
Kansas has been an outlier on abortion among states with Republican-controlled legislatures. The state Supreme Court declared in 2019 that the Kansas Constitution protects a right to bodily autonomy and therefore access to abortion as a “fundamental” right. GOP lawmakers proposed an amendment to the state constitution to declare that it doesn’t grant a right to abortion — and in the August 2022 vote, that ballot initiative lost by a wide margin, upholding abortion rights.
ARIZONA APPEAL
A federal appeals court has agreed to give abortion rights advocates a chance to revive their bid to block an Arizona law that makes it a felony for doctors to perform abortions on patients seeking the procedure solely because of a fetal genetic abnormality, such as Down syndrome.
In an order issued Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to a lower court to consider the doctors’ request for a court order blocking the law. The appeals court didn’t rule on the merits of the challenge but concluded nonetheless that the doctors had legal standing to make the request.
The three-judge panel said the doctors believe they would be targeted for prosecution, given that at least one of the state’s 15 county prosecutors intends to enforce the law, and that the doctors had shown they suffered economic losses by complying with the law.
“Even if the regulations were crystal clear, plaintiffs would still lose revenue from the abortions that they can no longer provide,” the court wrote.
The law makes it a felony punishable by four to 24 months behind bars for doctors to perform abortions if they know patients are seeking the procedure only because of a genetic abnormality in a fetus.
U.S. District Judge Douglas Rayes had blocked the ban in September 2021 in a lawsuit by the three obstetrician-gynecologists who perform abortions and a physicians’ association. He concluded the statute’s criminal provisions were likely unconstitutionally vague and said it was unclear at what point in the process doctors can be deemed to be aware that a fetal genetic abnormality exists.
But the U.S. Supreme Court later threw out the order and sent the case back to Rayes, who had written his ruling before the nation’s highest court in June 2022 overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion.
Rayes issued a new ruling in January, saying this time that the conduct the challengers claim to have been chilled from engaging in isn’t constitutionally protected anymore. The judge also said doctors don’t have a right to carry out elective abortions and their patients no longer have a right to receive them.