Kansas' GOP-controlled Legislature overrides veto of new abortion bill
Fox News
Kansas Legislature overrode the veto of an abortion bill that requires health care providers to take care of newborn infants during certain abortion procedures or face criminal charges.
GOP lawmakers and anti-abortion groups pushed for the new rule and other anti-abortion measures even though a decisive statewide vote in August 2022 affirmed abortion rights. Abortion opponents argued that voters still left room for "reasonable" restrictions, while abortion rights lawmakers said the bills broke faith with voters.
The new measure may be largely symbolic: Providers say the cases covered by the new law rarely, if ever, occur in Kansas because of how the state already regulates abortion. But abortion rights advocates also see the law as designed to sow confusion and fear so that doctors don't want to provide abortion care and women are afraid to seek it.
"The words in these laws do not have any kind of real meaning," said Elisabeth Smith, state policy and advocacy director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which defends access to abortion. "Doctors and hospitals and clinics that are trying to interpret them don't know what they mean and they don't know how a prosecutor or a district attorney will be reading those laws."