No one on the front lines of the fight over abortion access in Kansas believes this is the end.

But last week delivered two triumphant moments for abortion rights supporters in the Sunflower State, which has become a regional hub for reproductive healthcare in the four years since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, undoing the federal right to abortion.

On Aug. 3, a Johnson County District Court judge ruled that an array of lawmaker-imposed abortion care mandates were unconstitutionally restrictive and must be permanently blocked.

On Aug. 4, voters emphatically rejected a proposed constitutional amendment seeking to overhaul the process for selecting Kansas Supreme Court justices. The Republican lawmakers who championed direct election saw it as a path to remaking a court they have clashed with repeatedly, including over a landmark 2019 ruling affirming abortion access.

Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said watching the election returns roll in felt “a bit like déjà vu,” going back to the night in August 2022 when voters repudiated a proposal to remove the right to an abortion from the Kansas Constitution in the nation’s first post-Roe referendum.

Since states were granted the authority to ban the procedure, 75% of the patients that Planned Parenthood has seen at its four Kansas clinics traveled there from out of state, Wales said. The Kansas affiliate has experienced a 700% influx in calls inquiring about abortion care, she said. The number of pregnancies terminated in their facilities has roughly doubled since 2022.

“People know that Kansas is a place where you can get care that is banned in other states,” Wales said. “And that felt like a lot on the line on election night.”

What comes next for Kansas abortion opponents?

Between the amendment’s failure and the injunction against a collection of cumbersome provider restrictions, abortion opponents in Kansas will have to chart a new path forward.

“We may have lost a battle, but we still have the war,” said Rep. Will Carpenter, an El Dorado Republican who chairs the House Committee on Health and Human Services.

“We’re still in the fight for human life,” he said. “We’ll incrementally do whatever we can to continue that fight and protect the unborn.”

The 261-page ruling striking down state abortion restrictions was issued by K. Christopher Jayaram nine months after a trial where clinic owners and physicians argued the regulations were designed to scare and shame people out of getting abortions.

Some of the restrictions enjoined by the decision have been on the books since 1997. Others, including a requirement that abortion providers survey women about their reasons for seeking the procedure and provide medically dubious information suggesting that pill abortions are reversible, were adopted by the Kansas Legislature in 2023 and 2024.

Those and other pre-existing requirements, including Kansas’ 24-hour waiting period for abortions and a rule that physicians must listen to a fetus’ heartbeat 30 minutes before an abortion, were temporarily halted by Jayaram in the early stages of the court proceedings.

Jayaram’s ruling was filed electronically hours before he took the Supreme Court oath of office, making him the fourth justice on the seven-member court appointed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

Under Kansas law, Attorney General Kris Kobach’s office, which defended the abortion restrictions during the trial, can appeal the district court ruling up to 30 days after the verdict.

The Attorney General’s office did not respond to phone and email inquiries over multiple days.

The office also declined to comment when a reporter showed up at its Topeka headquarters to ask whether Kobach planned to appeal the ruling.

“My hope is not only that maybe they’re floundering after Kansans once again said, ‘Get out of our medical decisions. Don’t politicize our courts,’” Wales said. “But also maybe they’re reflecting on the laws they were trying to defend in that trial and realizing that they were steamrolling over people’s ability to access healthcare without political interference.”

Understanding the abortion ruling

During the seven-day bench trial, the judge heard from clinic staff and abortion care experts who testified that Planned Parenthood and another Overland Park clinic, Center for Women’s Health, provide care in line with national standards and prioritize patient safety and dignity.

In his ruling, Jayaram described pregnancy as an “intimate healthcare condition.”

“For some, it is joyous. For others, it is not,” Jayaram wrote. “… The decision to terminate a pregnancy is complex and intensely personal.”

His decision drew heavily from the Supreme Court’s landmark 2019 Hodes ruling upholding the constitutional right to an abortion.

“Because a woman’s right to bodily autonomy (including her right to decide whether to terminate or to continue a pregnancy) is fundamental, the court concludes, given the overwhelming evidence adduced at trial, that the state’s rationale and legislative schemes … simply do not, in significant part, survive constitutional scrutiny,” Jayaram wrote.

Beyond infringing on patients’ bodily autonomy by forcing them to “navigate a labyrinth of procedural hurdles” before receiving care, Jayaram found that the restrictions infringe on providers’ free speech by compelling them to share inaccurate and misleading information about abortions with patients, both verbally and on posted signs.

Sen. Beverly Gossage, a Eudora Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Public Health and Welfare, said she fundamentally disagrees with Jayaram’s analysis.

“A woman needs to have as much information as possible when she’s making a decision,” Gossage said. “As a pro-life person myself, I would hope we could help women not to choose that route — to find another route for her that does give life to her child.”

Among the witnesses who testified on behalf of the state were three women who shared their stories about receiving abortions in the 1970s and 1980s before coming to regret their decision.

Jayaram wrote that their testimony was of “marginal, if any, relevance to the issues in this case,” noting that only two of the women received abortions in Kansas, and none of them received abortions in the state when the relevant restrictions were in place. He characterized their opinions on abortion as “biased and untrustworthy.”

Another witness put forward by the attorney general’s office was an animal biologist with no clinical experience whose professional publications have exclusively involved animal research.

‘Backdoor’ abortion ban

Gossage vowed to redouble her efforts to impose new abortion restrictions when the Legislature convenes in January.

“I don’t stay discouraged,” Gossage said.

She denied that the failed Supreme Court amendment was designed to curtail abortion access, as its opponents argued in the lead-up to the vote.

But the month after Kansans rejected the abortion amendment in 2022, Kobach framed judicial selection as a proxy fight over abortion. Then a candidate for attorney general, Kobach told supporters that he was urging lawmakers to propose a direct election amendment that would allow conservatives to “slowly and quietly” assemble an anti-abortion majority on the court.

During a speech late last year, Senate President and GOP governor nominee Ty Masterson cautioned other Republicans against connecting the two issues, according to the Marion County Record.

“The solution in Kansas is that Supreme Court election,” Masterson said, according to the outlet. “But you can’t go out there and say it because they’ll say that if you elect your Supreme Court, you won’t have any right to abortion anymore.”

A spokesperson for Masterson’s campaign declined to comment.

One anti-abortion advocacy group made the connection explicit in the waning days of the campaign. Wichita-based Operation Rescue published a commentary from Sarah Neely, its chief operating officer, on July 27 titled, “A Yes Vote on August 4 Can Push Back on Kansas Supreme Court’s Radical Abortion Agenda.”

In a phone interview, Neely bemoaned the fact that 61% of voters rejected the amendment.

“That would have opened the door for Kansas voters to have a chance at supporting life-affirming laws through their Supreme Court. Right now, there’s no option for that,” Neely said.

Rep. Susan Ruiz, a Shawnee Democrat, said the issue of abortion access in Kansas is settled “for now” — but only “until the next amendment” proposal conservatives put forward.

She said the majority of her own constituents understood the Supreme Court proposal to be an insincere gambit.

“They understand that this was going to be eventually a backdoor way to ban abortion or severely restrict it more than it’s already restricted,” Ruiz said.

“I don’t see it stopping,” she added. “I’m sure somebody will be creative and come up with some kind of new avenue to try to get through. Because obviously, they can’t bust through the front door. They’re going to keep trying through the back doors.”

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