Prohibition of abortion procedure is blocked in Kansas
A Kansas judge on Thursday blocked the state’s firstin-the-nation ban on an abortion procedure that opponents describe as dismembering a fetus, concluding that it likely would present too big an obstacle for women seeking to end their pregnancies.
Shawnee County District Court Judge Larry Hendricks ruled in a lawsuit filed this month by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights. The center, representing two Kansas abortion providers, argued that the law would force women to undergo riskier procedures or forgo abortions.
The center noted that the procedure is used in 95 percent of second-trimester abortions nationally and said previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings don’t allow a state to ban the most common method for terminating a pregnancy.
Hendricks said those arguments were likely to prevail, even though alternative abortion methods still would be legal.
“The alternatives do not appear to be medically necessary or reasonable,” Hendricks said from the bench.
The judge’s order will stay in effect while he considers the lawsuit further. The new law was supposed to take effect July 1.
It was model legislation from the National Right to Life Committee. Kansas was the first state to enact it.
The judge also declared that the Kansas Constitution independently protects abortion rights at least as much as the U.S. Constitution does. Attorneys on both sides said such a ruling, if it stands, eventually could allow state courts to strike down restrictions that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld.
The new law would have banned doctors from using forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a live fetus to remove it from the womb in pieces.