‘Unlimited abortions’: Kansas sees record increase in abortions, as it deregulates while other states up regulations post-Roe

Kansas is becoming the abortion hub of the Midwest, with a record increase in the state’s aborted babies in 2022.

And with 69% of those abortions being performed on out-of-staters, it’s clear the Kansas abortion tourism industry is booming.

So says Kansans for Life, citing statistics from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s annual Abortions in Kansas preliminary report. The state’s 12,317 abortions last year is a 57% increase from the year before, says KFL; 8,475 were on women from other states.

The numbers may only continue to go up this year: It was only the latter half of last year that several states, such as Missouri, banned or tightened restrictions on abortions after Roe v. Wade was overturned. The restrictions in surrounding states will now cover the entirety of 2023, meaning a likely rise in the number of out-of-state abortions in Kansas..

Even as the number of abortions in Kansas goes up, the safety of them may go down. When the state’s voters last August rejected the Value Them Both Amendment – which would have protected existing safeguards for women in abortion clinics – those safeguards became subject to being overturned in the courts.

That’s exactly what’s happening.

Several safeguards for both women and children already have been tossed out by judges, including bans on live dismemberment abortions, a law banning remote “telemed” abortions (by pill) and a law providing for clinic sanitation, licensing and inspections, says KFL spokesperson Danielle Underwood.

Abortion providers also filed suit last month to strike down the Woman’s Right to Know Act’s waiting periods of 24 hours after a first visit, and then 30 minutes before the actual procedure, as well as state-mandated counseling that abortions by pill can be reversed before they’re final.

“They are coming after these really basic protections (for women)” in the wake of the failed Value Them Both vote last year, Underwood says.

If more voters had understood that the amendment would have protected existing regulations on the abortion industry, the election outcome might have been different, she says.

“If any person was just presented with the information and we said, ‘You decide if we should keep this or not,’ most Kansans would say, ‘Well, yes, we should keep that. Of course we should keep parental consent. Of course a woman should be allowed access to her ultrasound at no additional cost if she wants it. Well, of course she should be told that there are risks to the procedure. Of course she should be told that the Board of Healing Arts has censured this physician, or that this physician is out-of-state.’”

As surrounding states have increased regulations on abortion and Kansas has reduced them, abortion tourism has become such a hot item that Planned Parenthood actually advertised in the Kansas City, Kansas Visitors Guide.

“To have that in, literally, a tourist publication to try to attract people here for our museums and our great cultural scene – ‘and by the way, you can get an abortion too!’ – it’s just sad and sickening,” Underwood says.

The reason the state’s regulations on abortion are now falling away is the 2019 Hodes & Nauser v. Derek Schmidt decision by the Kansas Supreme Court that inferred a constitutional right to abortion in the state Constitution.

It was the state’s own Roe v. Wade. And it is still in force.

Has Kansas become the Midwest abortion tourism destination as a result? 

“We would say yes,” Underwood says. “And we’ve been saying that for quite a while – really since that 2019 ruling came down from our state Supreme Court. We’ve been saying that Kansas is on a path to become an abortion destination state for the Midwest, for unlimited, unrestricted abortions in unmonitored facilities. 

“So, this is something that we have sadly predicted that is indeed apparently coming true. And now we have shocking figures from our state government to confirm that that is indeed the case.”

Big-spending abortion proponents disingenuously comforted Kansas voters that they didn’t need to approve the Value Them Both Amendment last year, pointing to abortion regulations already on the books. What they didn’t say was that 1) those regulations were likely to get wiped off the books without the amendment, or that 2) those same abortion proponents would see to it.

“[Voters] were told that abortion was heavily regulated in Kansas and would remain so even if the amendment failed,” Underwood explains. “That was intentional misinformation – misinformation from the pro-abortion side, trying to mislead voters.”

The result: With Missouri and other regional states increasing regulations on abortion, and Kansas reducing them, the Sunflower State has become something of a Midwest Mecca for ending pregnancies.

An overturning of the state’s 24-hour waiting period would likely increase the number of out-of-state abortions all the more.

Kansas law also currently requires parental notification in abortion cases involving minors, but Underwood says that law too is in jeopardy because of the Value Them Both failure.

“Really what we’re talking about is informed consent, which, when we look at informed consent and the way that it’s looked at internationally, it was literally written into the Nuremberg code because informed consent was considered the same level of necessity as freedom from torture,” Underwood says. 

“This is an essential human right, to have informed consent before a major medical procedure. We want women to have that kind of information, to not be kept in the dark. The Woman’s Right to Know Act that the abortionists are suing (to overturn) simply guarantees women aren’t kept in the dark about what’s about to happen, by whom, and what their other options are.

“So, not only are abortionists seeking to remove access to information that many women have deemed essential to this life-altering decision, they’re also aggressively working to speed up the decision-making process — just forcing women into abortion without discussion of alternatives. They want to remove that 24-hour waiting period. They want to remove the 30-minute waiting period. 

“Apparently they want women to just be pushed through abortion facilities like cattle through a stall, instead of treating them like the humans that they are and be given full information about what they’re truly deciding on. 

“The abortion industry is a profit-driven industry, and it needs to be held accountable because it has built-in incentives to increase the number of abortions. That’s at odds with what most Kansans want for our state. We don’t want to be a destination state for abortions. We don’t want to be known for being this abortion epicenter of the Midwest.

“Right now we’re on an unsustainable path toward unlimited abortions.”