Kansas won’t require abortion doctors to ask patients’ reasons | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

TOPEKA, Kansas — Kansas is not enforcing a new law requiring abortion doctors to ask patients why they want to end their pregnancies, as legal challenges to the rule and other older requirements are pending in court.

Lawyers for the state and providers challenging the new law and other requirements announced a deal Thursday. In exchange for not enforcing the law, the state will have four more months to develop its defense of the challenged restrictions, ahead of a trial now postponed until late June 2025. The agreement was announced during a Zoom hearing in Johnson County Superior Court in the Kansas City area.

Kansas bans most abortions until the 22nd week of pregnancy. The clinics are now seeing thousands of patients from other states with near-bans on abortion, notably Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

Last fall, U.S. District Judge K. Christopher Jayaram blocked enforcement of requirements that included rules specifying what providers must tell their patients and a longstanding requirement that patients wait 24 hours after seeing a provider to undergo a procedure. On July 1, he allowed the providers to add a challenge to the new reporting law to their existing lawsuit instead of forcing them to file a separate case.

The new law would go into effect July 1 and would require health care providers to ask patients questions from a state script about their reasons for seeking an abortion, though patients would not be forced to answer. Possible reasons include not being able to afford a child, not wanting a disabled child, not wanting to quit school or a career, and having an abusive spouse or partner. Clinics would be required to send data on patients’ answers to the state health department every six months for public reporting.

“We are relieved that this intrusive law will not go into effect,” the Center for Reproductive Rights, the national abortion provider organization Planned Parenthood, and the regional Planned Parenthood chapter said in a joint statement. “This law would have forced abortion providers to collect deeply personal information — an unwarranted invasion of patient privacy that has nothing to do with people’s health.”

Kansas already collects data on every abortion, such as the method and week of pregnancy, but abortion opponents argue that more information will help inform policies to help pregnant women and new mothers. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law over a veto from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

At least eight other states have such reporting requirements, but the Kansas Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that the state Constitution protects access to abortion as part of a “fundamental” right to bodily autonomy. In August 2022, Kansas voters decisively rejected a proposed amendment to say the Constitution does not provide a right to access abortion.

The providers’ trial was scheduled to take place in late February 2025, but Jayaram postponed the case in response to the deal between the parties.

“The state is willing to agree to an agreement not to enforce the new law until the final ruling, provided that we get a schedule that takes into account the record that we think we have to build in this case,” said Lincoln Wilson, a senior attorney for the anti-abortion Alliance Defending Freedom, which is leading the defense of the state’s laws.

Abortion clinics said on July 1 that the state would not enforce the new reporting requirement while the lawsuit was pending, but the Department of Health and Human Services would not confirm this when asked by reporters.