Kansas Supreme Court Strikes Down Two Anti-Abortion Laws

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ highest court strongly reaffirmed Friday that the state constitution protects abortion access, striking down a ban on a common second-trimester procedure and laws regulating abortion providers more strictly than other health care providers.

The pair of 5-1 decisions suggests that other restrictions — even ones decades on the books — might not withstand legal challenges. The court’s dissenting justice, widely seen as its most conservative, warned that Kansas is headed toward “a legal regime of unrestricted access to abortion.”

“This is an immense victory for the health, safety, and dignity of people in Kansas and the entire Midwestern region, where millions have been cut off from abortion access,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the abortion providers challenging the two laws.

The decisions came almost two years after an August 2022 statewide vote decisively affirming abortion rights, the first such vote after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022 that allowed states to ban abortion altogether. Kansas voters rejected a proposed change in the state constitution approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature to declare that the document provides no right to abortion.

Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach’s office had argued that the 2022 vote didn’t matter in determining whether the two laws could stand. But Justice Evelyn Wilson, one of three justices appointed to the seven-member court after its landmark 2019 decision, said that while she might have dissented then, “The people spoke with their votes.”

“The results were accepted by the people, and Kansas showed the world how things are done in a successful