Amid record numbers of aborted pregnancies conducted in Kansas since the June 2022 reversion of the federal Roe v. Wade ruling to state authority, abortion advocates gathered in Topeka Saturday in support of Democrat candidates touting abortion as a so-called “reproductive right.”
Hampered by Saturday rains much needed by the area but which reduced the rally’s anticipated crowd, speakers at the event repeated the well-traveled line embraced by those pressing abortion as a continually dominanting issue that Kansas Legislators had developed periphery legislation around the practice, but presenters seemed to ignore the skyrocketing actual numbers in the state.
Those raw numbers leaped after Kansas voters defeated the “Value Them Both” constitutional amendment in August 2022 after Roe’s reversion, which would have made the procedure illegal in the state. The rejection of that amendment turned Kansas into an abortion destination for women in surrounding states which forbade the procedure’s legality, increasing the number of abortions in Kansas by 114 percent in just the first six months of 2023 when compared with 2020.
One abortion clinic in Wichita estimated 75 percent of its patients were coming from out of state in the months after the failure of VTB, and estimated it was receiving some 5,000 calls per day.
Still, speakers at Saturday’s rally warned abortion was in danger, albeit reaching far back into history for evidence.
“Every year that I was in the House, and every year since then, there has been stronger and more restrictive pushes on Roe,” said Joan Wagnon, a Democrat who served in the Kansas Legislature from 1983 to 1995. Wagnon said conservatives who took over the legislature eventually forwarded the VTB amendment. She said when she celebrated the Roe decision, abortion opponents called her a “baby killer.”
Republicans led efforts since the reversion of Roe to override Democrat Governor Laura Kelly’s vetoes to enact three abortion-related laws and institute other monitoring measure designed to reduce the number of the procedures. Those include funding for pregnancy centers that provide abortion alternatives, easier prosecution for coercing a woman to have an abortion, a survey identifying a woman’s reason for seeking an abortion and a “born alive law” requiring medical professionals to render lifesaving aid to a baby who survives an abortion attempt.
While not addressing the surge in abortions in the state since Roe’s reversion, state Democrat Party Chairwoman Jenna Repass said the VTB vote proved Kansans wanted abortion to be legal in the state despite efforts by Republicans she said were designed to restrict it. She called conservative dominance of the legislature, elected by voters in 40 Senate and 125 House districts, “minority majority rule.”
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has refused to release 2023 data on abortions in Kansas along its standard schedule which would have been made last summer. Pro-abortion advocates estimate the state may have ended more than 20,000 pregnancies over that year.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
