Kansas abortion businesses filed a lawsuit June 5 against the state for four of its abortion laws. The plaintiffs, which include the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Great Plains, and Hodes and Nauser Women’s Health, have also asked the court to block the recently-passed abortion pill reversal law immediately while their lawsuit proceeds.
According to KCUR, the lawsuit claims that four of the state’s laws are unconstitutional, including:
- A law requiring abortionists to provide state-mandated counseling prior to the abortion
- A law implementing a 24-hour waiting period after the woman receives that counseling
- A law mandating a 30-minute waiting period in between the time a woman meets with the abortionist and the abortionist starts the procedure
- A law mandating that women must receive information about abortion pill reversal
The abortion pill reversal law was passed in April, after lawmakers overrode a veto from Governor Laura Kelly. It is scheduled to go into effect on July 1.
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that a mandatory waiting period is burdensome to women.
“It singles out abortion care for medically unnecessary additional regulation that delays and impedes access to abortion, stigmatizes and demeans people seeking abortion and perpetrates the discriminatory view that pregnant people are uniquely in need of the State’s paternalistic intervention into their health care and family planning decisions,” the lawsuit reads.
Planned Parenthood said that the 24-hour waiting period hurts business, as it affects women who come for abortion from out of state.
“It has not had the burdensome effect as it has today as, more and more, our patients are driving so many hours,” Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Great Plains, said. “It is not something that happens on occasion. Literally every day, our abortion facilities in Kansas are seeing parents who are doing something that doesn’t meet the 24 hour consent requirement.”
Danielle Underwood, of Kansans for Life, told The Topeka Capital-Journal that the lawsuit represents an “unprecedented attack on a woman’s right to informed consent before an abortion is performed on her.”
“Not only are they seeking to remove access to information that many women have deemed essential to this life-altering decision, they’re aggressively working to speed up the decision-making process, seemingly forcing women into abortion without discussion of alternatives,” Underwood said.
