Kansas cannot enforce laws that would force abortion patients to wait 24 hours for the procedure or be given anti-abortion talking points, a judge ruled on Monday.
The move comes months after Kansans overwhelmingly voted to protect abortion rights in the state’s constitution.
Judge K Christopher Jayaram’s preliminary injunction will freeze a host of abortion restrictions. Some of the restrictions date back to the 1990s, such as a law that requires abortion patients to wait 24 hours between an initial consultation and their procedure. Others were passed as recently as this year, such as a law that would have required abortion providers to indicate to patients that their pill-induced abortion could be “reversed” – a claim that is not backed up by science.
The suspended abortion restrictions probably not only infringe on patients’ constitutional right to bodily autonomy guaranteed by the Kansas state constitution, Jayaram said, but they probably violate abortion providers’ free speech rights.
“The Court has great respect for the deeply held beliefs on either side of this contentious issue,” Jayaram wrote in a 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. The State may pick a side and viewpoint, but in doing so, it may not trespass upon the natural inalienable rights of the people.”
The Johnson county district judge’s order is set to last until a trial in the case, which is scheduled for 2024.
Last year, Kansas became the first state to vote on abortion after the fall of Roe v Wade. Usually a reliably red state, Kansas stunned the nation when abortion rights supporters won a landslide victory to keep abortion rights in the state constitution.
The Monday ruling further highlights the importance of state constitutions in the post-Roe battle over abortion. Now that the US constitution no longer contains the right to an abortion, abortion rights supporters have sought to embed or defend abortion rights in states’ constitutions. So far, they have been successful, winning multiple voter referendums on the issue.
Since Roe’s demise, Kansas has also become a haven for people fleeing the abortion bans that now blanket much of the southern and midwestern United States. But there are only a handful of abortion clinics in Kansas, and they have been besieged by patients. One abortion clinic involved in the lawsuit had its number of patients surge by 40%; almost two-thirds of the clinic’s patients are traveling more than 100 miles for abortions.
Trust Women, an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, that was not a part of the lawsuit, now treats double to triple the number of patients the clinic saw before Roe fell. Seventy per cent of its patients come from out of state, and of those out-of-state patients, 70% come from Texas.
“We are very much a regional healthcare provider now,” Zack Gingrich-Gaylord, Trust Women’s communications director, said. Without these restrictions, Gingrich-Gaylord said, Trust Women should be able to see a few more patients each week.
“It creates a better atmosphere of comfort and safety and security for the patients that are coming in, to know that the state isn’t coming into this clinic and trying to undermine their experience,” he added.
