KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Mere weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in a case that took away federal abortion protections, Kansas voters turned out in an August election that marked the nation's first referendum on abortion rights following the court's decision.
That election generated an unexpected landslide as Kansas voters affirmed autonomy rights in the state's constitution.
Despite that vote, access to abortion health care in The Free State is in limbo, a lawsuit against the state alleges. The uncertainty also comes as Kansas abortion providers say they are struggling to meet an increased demand as neighboring states have passed additional abortion regulations.
Abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood Great Plains, sued the state of Kansas on June 6 for a law that was enacted this year and was set to take effect on July 1, the law would require providers to tell patients who utilized medication abortion that the abortion can possibly be reversed after ingesting the pill by using an unproven regimen.
“Kansas has had for years mandatory consent processes for abortion care that are not at all standard in health care,” Planned Parenthood Great Plains CEO and president Emily Wales said. “Abortion requires that patients get all sorts of extra information from the state, there's delay tactics, there's interference from politicians in the medical care that you're receiving, that's unlike anything most of the patients we see ever have seen or ever will see.”
She said there are a “couple of things” that pushed plaintiffs in the case to challenge the state this year on “whether the requirements they have in place are constitutional.”
On Tuesday, June 20, Kansas officials agreed to put a five-week hold on a recently introduced requirement for providers when administering medication abortions, and some providers and medical groups say the requirement is not medically proven and could harm patients.
Two days later, Johnson County District Court Judge K. Christopher Jayaram said the state has agreed not to enforce the provisions of the law pending his ruling on the plaintiffs' request for a temporary injunction.
According to The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the abortion “reversal” treatment is not a science-based treatment and it does not recommend prescribing it to stop a medication abortion because it does not meet clinical standards. ACOG said laws such as the one pending in Kansas “represent dangerous political interference and compromise patient care and safety.”
In a not-so-uncommon back-and-forth phenomenon in today’s politics, Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill, but the Republican-led Kansas legislature overrode her veto on April 27.
The lawsuit, which is challenging the law known as “the Biased Counseling Scheme," alleges the act has become “increasingly absurd and invasive - requiring patients to be bombarded with medically inaccurate information through multiple channels."
“The Kansas abortion laws that are currently in place are not obsessive, but are helpful," Wendy Curtis with KC Coalition for Life said in an email to KSHB 41. "They ensure a woman's right to know information regarding her abortion procedure and fetal development."
The other mandate referenced in the lawsuit requires a 24-hour wait period between a patient’s initial abortion health care appointment and an abortion procedure or medication abortion.
“The 24-hour waiting period is not a regulation that has anything to do with the safe medical provision of abortion care. It is simply a barrier to that care,” Zachary Gingrich-Gaylord, communications director of Wichita abortion clinic Trust Women, told KSHB 41.
As of now, Kansas is on the geographic front line of abortion rights in a divided country, separating the South and the Midwest from the West. Two of Kansas' four neighboring states have a complete ban on abortion.
Last year, on June 24, when Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was decided, Missouri’s trigger law went into effect, putting a complete ban on abortions. While Missouri residents can receive abortions in other states, they can only receive an abortion in Missouri if their life or health is in danger.
Abortion is legal for Kansas’ northern neighbor, Nebraska, but not after 12 weeks of pregnancy, and there are certain laws on abortion access.
Kansas’ southern neighbor, Oklahoma, was the first state in the country to put a complete ban on abortion, a month prior to the Dobbs decision. Their law was modeled off of a Texas law that passed in 2021, putting a six-week ban on abortions; Texas now has a complete ban on abortion.
Because of the complete ban on abortions in those states, some residents seeking abortions come to Kansas.
Trust Women in Wichita says it is overwhelmed with patients seeking abortions. The clinic no longer offers other reproductive health care services it once did in an effort to meet the demand of patients seeking abortions; the clinic has recently received up to 15,000 calls a day, according to Gingrich-Gaylord.
“If you come in for for an abortion and you want IUD placement in that same appointment, we can do that sort of thing, but some of the more broad community health services that we may have offered before, in Wichita, we're no longer offering those because there's other places for local residents to get that,” Gingrich-Gaylord said.
Trust Women first saw a wave of out-of-state patients when Texas passed its six-week ban on abortions. The clinic said it sees approximately 500 patients a month seeking abortions, which is nearly four times as many patients it saw prior to Texas enacting its ban in 2021. Around 70 percent of its 500 monthly patients are Texas residents, according to Gingrich-Gaylord.
The clinic also sees noticeable numbers of out-of-state patients from Oklahoma and sometimes Gulf states, such as Louisiana and Alabama.
As some states, including Missouri, have considered laws restricting their residents from getting out-of-state abortions, Katie Keith with the White House Gender Policy Council told KSHB 41 that President Biden is relying on Congress to pass laws that could protect such rights.
HOW DID ABORTION RIGHTS PREVAIL IN KANSAS?
"Voter turnout exceeded the Secretary of State's prediction," a Kansas Secretary of State spokesperson said in a statement following the Aug. 2, 2022 election.
Voter turnout for the 2022 primaries compared very high to previous Kansas primaries; in 2018 approximately half of the number of Kansans voted in the primary compared to last year’s, with 457,598 votes cast in 2018 and 908,745 votes cast in 2022.
Election officials say the overturning of Roe a little over a month before the 2022 primaries could have played a role in Kansans showing up to the polls and vote for or against the anti-abortion constitutional amendment.
“The amendment question is probably driving a lot of it,” Wyandotte County election commissioner Michael Abbott told KSHB 41 News last year. “On June 24 when Roe v. Wade came out with the announcement, that following day we had little over 150 new applications and every day since then, it would average at least over 100, so it's been pretty busy since that announcement.”
And the results were unexpectedly decisive: 59.16% of Kansans voted against the measure that would have allowed the legislature to potentially rollback abortion protections, while 40.84% voted to allow the legislature to revisit the issue.
Advance in-person voting and mail-in ballots had a comparably higher turnout in some of Kansas’ most populous counties – including Sedgwick, Wyandotte and Johnson – compared to previous elections, according to the Associated Press.
According to KSHB 41 analysis of 2022 primary election results, approximately 15% of Kansans who voted for former President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2020 crossed political lines and voted in support of abortion rights.
Both sides of the aisle heavily canvassed for voter turnout leading up to the primary. Whether it was through rallies, going door-to-door, handing out buttons and stickers, sticking a sign in front yards or TV ads, both sides adamantly campaigned.
WHAT NOW?
Abortion providers are having to improvise.
“Here we are less than a year after a resounding vote by Kansans to protect access to abortion care, and the legislature passed a law that would put Kansans’ lives at danger in an attempt to restrict access to care,” Wales said.
Gingrich-Gaylord said Trust Women has had to revise and update its infrastructure due to the high demand.
“We've upgraded our phones, for instance, two or three times in the past year, to be able to handle the amount of incoming calls,” he said.
Two years ago Trust Women had between five and eight full-time staff members and it worked with one or two doctors. Now, it has approximately 25 full-time employees and works with around 18 providers.
“Most of these providers actually fly in (to Wichita),” Gingrich-Gaylord said. “This is pretty typical for clinics, independent clinics in this region. It's difficult to get hometown doctors to provide abortions in our clinic.”
He said it’s difficult for doctors to work in the Wichita area due to hostility toward abortion in the region.
“It is not at all far from anyone's mind what happened to Dr. Tiller in 2009, you know, and unfortunately, he's not the only abortion provider who has been murdered. There's violence against clinics every day,” Gingrich-Gaylord said, adding that protesters gather outside the clinic on a daily basis.
George Tiller was murdered in Wichita in 2009 when he was one of few doctors in the United States performing late-term abortions, according to the Associated Press.
It's unclear when Judge Jayaram will rule on the temporary injunction, but the next hearing in the case is set for Aug. 8.
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