TOPEKA, Kan.—An abortion rights group will ask a Kansas judge Thursday to block the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on what it says is the most common method for terminating second-trimester pregnancies, contending that the new law would force some women to either accept higher medical risks or forgo abortions.
But the state’s lawyers were expected to argue in Shawnee County District Court that abortion providers have safe alternatives to the procedure, which anti-abortion activists describe as dismembering a fetus.
District Judge Larry Hendricks’ hearing in a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights comes just six days before the ban takes effect, and the group is asking him to block it at least until its lawsuit is heard.
The National Right to Life Committee drafted the ban as model legislation for states. Kansas was the first to enact it, though Oklahoma followed with a statute set to take effect in November. The center’s lawsuit said the ban applies to a procedure used in 95 percent of second trimester abortions nationally.
“It’s among the most extreme restrictions that we’ve seen,” said Janet Crepps, a senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights. “It’s a ban on the most common method in the second trimester.”
The center represents father-daughter Drs. Herbert Hodes and Traci Nauser, who perform abortions at a health center in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park.
Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s office declined to comment ahead of the hearing, but in a court filing last week, attorneys for the state denied that the law blocks access to safe abortions.
“Instead, it simply declares one particularly gruesome and medically unnecessary method of abortion to be beyond society’s tolerance level,” they wrote.
