In the early 1990s, anti-abortion activists from around the country flocked to Kansas and made it the epicenter of protests over what may have been the country’s most contentious social issue.
In the years that followed, the state imposed ever stricter regulations on abortion. Places like Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas went even further.
So when the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the state Constitution included a woman’s right to an abortion, Kansas became a refuge. Today abortions for out-of-staters now outnumber those performed on women from the state.
Those days could be numbered. A ban could be coming.
On Aug. 2, voters will decide whether to amend the Kansas Constitution — effectively overruling the state’s high court and stripping out the right to abortion.
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last month, the country is again looking to Kansas and its first-in-the-nation vote on abortion. Passage of the amendment would open the door for tighter restrictions, and the very real possibility of the Republican-dominated Legislature imposing an outright ban.
“People are really energized right now,” said ACLU of Kansas legal director Sharon Brett, a volunteer for the Kansans for Constitutional Freedom group working to keep abortion legal in Kansas. “They’re mad. They’re angry and they want to fight.”
After the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, neighboring states Missouri and Oklahoma immediately banned abortion. Missouri’s law has no exemption for rape or incest.
The Value Them Both Coalition pushing to pass the amendment has argued that a change in the state constitution merely gives officials elected by Kansans the power to regulate abortion in line with the beliefs of people in the state. Supporters of the amendment have been coy about saying whether they’d push for an abortion ban.
Yet it’s becoming clearer that a ban would almost certainly follow.
A regional director of the Value Them Both Coalition told Reno County Republicans last month that the organization has legislation ready to ban abortion in Kansas if the amendment passes, according to a report from the Kansas Reflector.
A state senator also told the crowd he wanted to pass laws “with my goal of life starting at conception.”
Kansas University Law Professor Stephen McAllister, who was a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the U.S. Attorney for Kansas under President Trump, said it comes down to political control of the state.
“This is about basically, given the Republican Party’s control of the Legislature, the ability to ban abortion,” McAllister says. “That’s the bottom line. Next session, if this amendment passes, there will be bills to ban abortion right out of the gate.”
Even if Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly wins reelection in November, conservatives in the Legislature would likely have the numbers to override a veto of an abortion ban.
