by Joe Bollig
[email protected]

KANSAS CITY, Kansas – Two more state pro-life bills designed to protect women and unborn children have failed – hardly surprisingly.

In its July 5 decisions in Hodes v. Kobach and Hodes v. Stanek, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled by a 5-1 vote to block the state from enforcing two laws that regulated the abortion industry in Kansas.

“Our Kansas Supreme Court just struck down two of the state’s most commonsense laws regulating the abortion industry,” said Danielle Underwood, communications director for Kansans for Life.

“The first (Hodes v. Kobach) was the restriction of abortion by live dismemberment, one of the cruelest and most painful methods of abortion. The second (Hodes v. Stanek) was our state’s law on sanitation and safety standards for clinics, which included inspections and licensing,” she continued.

Votes have consequences

These recent rulings are a direct result of the defeat in the August 2, 2022 vote on the “Value Them Both” amendment to amend the state constitution.

At the time, pro-life activists predicted devastating consequences if the “Value Them Both” campaign failed.

“It is painful to have to say to Kansas voters, ‘We told you so.’ They were misled by the abortion industry’s assurances that our state would remain tightly regulated even if voters rejected the amendment,” Underwood said.

“Cherish them both” would have overturned a 2019 ruling in Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt, in which the Kansas Supreme Court found a nearly unfettered “right to abortion” in the Kansas Constitution of 1859.

In its rulings in July, the court confirmed its 2019 decision that all abortion laws passed by the state parliament were unconstitutional.

By setting new, stricter standards for judicial review of laws regulating Kansas’ abortion industry, the court has created a nearly insurmountable hurdle to the passage of new legislation. In addition, it has thrown into question all existing pro-life laws, including those protecting parental consent and those prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortion.

“Based on the court’s extreme ruling in the 2019 Hodes case, we find that there is little the state can do to regulate the abortion industry that would be upheld by the Kansas courts,” said Jeanne Gawdun, director of government relations for Kansans for Life.

Expected and disappointing

The July 5 court rulings were expected but nonetheless disappointing, said Chuck Weber, executive director of the Kansas Catholic Conference, the political advocacy group for Kansas’ Catholic bishops.

“It is a sad fact that many Kansas residents – including many Catholics – have bought into the blatant lies of the abortion industry and the secular media,” Weber said. “Abortion in Kansas is certainly not ‘safe or highly regulated.’ In fact, the abortion industry is slowly but surely undermining laws that protect women’s health.”

In the run-up to the vote on the “Value Them Both” amendment on August 2, 2022, pro-life advocates predicted that a no vote would lead to an increase in abortions in Kansas and more women would travel to Kansas for an abortion, Gawdun said.

Both have come true.

The total number of induced abortions in Kansas increased from 6,916 in 2019 to 12,318 in 2022, according to Abortions in Kansas: 2022 Preliminary Report. The same report found that abortions by out-of-state residents increased from 3,373 in 2019 to 8,475 in 2022.

According to Kansans for Life, those numbers are likely higher.

The price of lies

Opponents of Value Them Both from the abortion industry also made false and misleading claims in 2022 that the change in the law would be a total ban on abortion and that women with life-threatening pregnancies – such as miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies – would no longer be able to seek medical care.

“They scared the women,” Gawdun said.

Among the biggest lies was that Value Them Both was unnecessary because of existing laws regulating the abortion industry, she said. That claim was made even as they tried to overturn those very laws in court with the 2019 ruling.

This deception was noted by Kansas Supreme Court Justice Caleb Stegall, who wrote in his only dissenting opinion on the July 5 rulings: “During the (2022) election campaign, however, Kansas was inundated with claims that a no vote on the amendment merely secures a moderate, reasonable, centrist status quo.”

Stegall also noted that a supporter of a “no” vote said that if the amendment were defeated, women would be “in the same situation as they are now. I mean, we have access to abortion care, but we also have restrictions and common sense regulations,” the supporter said, adding, “Everyone agrees that abortion should be regulated like any other medical procedure.”

In reality, the abortion industry wants to prevent new regulations and abolish existing ones.

“But now the game is over,” Stegall wrote. “As smart activists knew from the beginning, legislation would not be necessary because this Court will not allow any regulation of abortion – not one – under the expansive legal regime we announced in Hodes I (2019).”

What happens next?

The question many pro-life activists have been asking since 2022 is: What do we do now?

The answer: much of what they did before.

“We must do everything we can to help mothers in crisis situations and their children,” said Gawdun. “Especially after the 2019 ruling, we said we must do everything we can to support maternity homes and pregnancy counseling centers – and increase support even further.”

Pro-life activists in the state of Kansas must increase their financial and volunteer support for life-affirming alternatives.

“Kansas residents need access to better data so we can understand why women have abortions,” Gawdun said, “and what we can do as a state to help women choose the lives of their children. This session, we succeeded in passing improved abortion reporting standards, but they, too, are being attacked in court by the abortion industry.”

Education is vital.

“We need to educate the people of Kansas about the humanity of the unborn because the courts have said the unborn child doesn’t matter,” Gawdun said. “It’s all about the woman’s personal, bodily autonomy. The unborn child is not an issue for the courts. We need to educate our fellow Kansas citizens that this is a human being, just like you and me.”

Pro-lifers in Kansas need to know that voting still matters. They need to vote for pro-life officials in all parts of government.

“We need to elect pro-abortion legislators in both chambers to achieve a supermajority and override the governor’s vetoes of pro-abortion legislation,” she said. “We need (legislative) votes to maintain funding for pregnancy counseling centers.”