A district court judge in Kansas issued an order on Monday blocking several pro-life laws before he was sworn in to the state Supreme Court.
K. Christopher Jayaram, who was a Johnson County District Court judge at the time of the decision, blocked several laws, including a 24-hour waiting period for abortions, a requirement for abortionists to survey women about their reasons for seeking an abortion, and requiring them to provide information about abortion pill reversal, and requiring doctors to listen to the baby’s heartbeat 30 minutes before an abortion, the Kansas City Star reported.
Jayaram had blocked some of the laws in the earlier stages of court proceedings in 2023 after Hodes & Nauser, Planned Parenthood Great Plains, and another abortion clinic brought the lawsuit against the state.
He handed down the ruling on the eve of a primary election where Kansas voters will decide on a constitutional amendment that would change the process of how the state selects Supreme Court justices. The amendment would switch the process to a direct election, according to the report.
In his ruling, he called pregnancy an “intimate healthcare condition” and called the pro-life laws “draconian,” according to the report. His decision largely drew on an older decision from the state Supreme Court upholding a supposed constitutional right to 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.
The Kansas Attorney General’s Office had argued that the pro-life laws were necessary to allow women to understand their options before having an abortion. Attorney General Kris Kobach did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment by the time of publication.
Mackenzie Ayers, a spokesperson for Kansans for Life, criticized the ruling.
“By striking down the Woman’s Right to Know Act, the court has stripped away commonsense protections that had been in place for nearly 30 years and helped ensure women received the information they needed before making a life-altering decision, leaving them even more vulnerable to a predatory abortion industry that consistently puts its own profits ahead of women,” Ayers said.
In Kansas, abortions are legal before 22 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for the life of the mother or for serious health threats. Kansas voters voted against a proposed constitutional amendment in 2022 that would have stripped protections for abortion from the state constitution.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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