BY: ALLISON KITE - Kansas Reflector
A leading abortion rights group’s CEO says restrictions on travel for patients seeking an abortion could be the next fight over reproductive health
OVERLAND PARK — In the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court removed constitutional protections for abortion, Kansas providers have seen a surge in patients.
While states across the country moved swiftly to restrict access to abortion after the court struck down Roe v. Wade, Kansas voters opted to keep protections in place.
Now, a leading abortion rights advocate says, the next fight could be over allowing patients to travel to receive abortions.
“That is coming,” said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes. “Legislators are not ending their attacks on abortion. They’re just getting more nuanced.”
Wales spoke Monday alongside U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Kansas Democrat, at a press conference on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which struck down Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that guaranteed the right to an abortion.
Davids said she has heard from constituents over and over that they fear their children and grandchildren “are going to grow up with fewer rights than they did.” And despite Kansas voters’ decision to keep abortion protected under the state constitution, Davids noted anti-abortion legislators continue to add restrictions and hurdles to patients seeking access.
“And any day now, we anticipate a decision from the Supreme Court that has the potential to once again erode or rip away health care, reproductive health care rights and, again, puts women at serious risk of not just illness but death,” Davids said.
She called it “unacceptable and concerning” and said pro-abortion rights Americans were not being heard.
“Have we not made our voices clear?” Davids said. “Have we not made our intentions and desires as citizens of this country clear? We should be expanding access to reproductive health care.”
Wales called the anniversary of the Dobbs decision a “solemn occasion,” saying Planned Parenthood patients went from being able to make their own decisions to “having the government interfere directly.”
“We are fortunate to be in a state where we do have access to abortion,” Wales said, “and we are now serving so many patients from out of state. We are seeing firsthand what a public health crisis looks like in Kansas.”
The Kansas Supreme Court in 2019 ruled the state constitution’s right to bodily autonomy extends to the decision to terminate a pregnancy. Kansas voters then rejected a constitutional amendment to remove the right to an abortion by a 59-41 margin in August 2022, two months after the Dobbs decision.
Since Roe was overturned, Wales said, Planned Parenthood’s Kansas clinics have seen a surge of patients from Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and other states that enacted severe abortion restrictions. She fears states that have restricted access to abortion may soon make it harder for patients to travel to receive one.
Planned Parenthood is also challenging legislation passed by Kansas lawmakers — over Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto — this spring that requires patients to answer a series of questions about whether they have been raped, if their partner is abusive or whether the pregnancy resulted from incest before receiving an abortion. The survey also would collect demographic information, including age, home state, race, level of education and marital status.
Kansans for Life, the state’s leading anti-abortion group, released a statement criticizing Planned Parenthood’s court challenge of that law and Kelly’s administration for holding the release of annual state statistics on abortion. The state in previous years has released the report before June 30.
“Gov. Kelly’s decision to not release the numbers shows the very reason the legislation was needed in the first place,” Kansans for life said. “Is she afraid of Kansans seeing abortions are skyrocketing while one of the largest abortion clinics was operating without medical oversight?”
The statement was referring to the Trust Women clinic in Wichita that closed earlier this month, citing staff and protocol changes.
“As we said on last year’s (Dobbs) anniversary,” the Kansans for Life statement said, “we will continue to work for a day the Sunflower State is a place that empowers women and gives them the tools to choose life — not the ever-growing destination for cruel abortions it has become.”
Jill Bronaugh, communications director for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said in a statement that the state agency’s decision to release the abortion data later this year came before lawmakers enacted a requirement that providers survey abortion patients and the state public statistics on abortion twice each year.
“KDHE is evaluating the reporting requirements and internal methods to determine when the biannual reports will be released,” Bronaugh said. “No dates have been set at this time.”
She said all abortion data will be included in the agency’s annual vital statistics report released in the late fall.
Wales welcomed the news that abortion statistics will be included with other health care information released annually. She said it doesn’t change anything for Planned Parenthood, which reports to the state monthly.
“It is nice to see abortion treated like other types of statistics in the state,” she said, “instead of being a political report that comes out on its own and gets lots of attention. It makes sense that public health officials would use data like they do in every other type of medical care.”