Shawnee County judge blocks Kansas’ ban on 2nd-trimester abortion procedure

A Kansas state judge has temporarily blocked a new law that would have banned the most common method of abortion in the second trimester.

The law, adopted in April and the first of its kind in the nation, would have barred a method known as dilation and evacuation, which doctors say is usually the safest and most convenient abortion technique after about the 12th to 14th week of pregnancy.

Abortion opponents labeled the procedure “dismemberment abortion,” defining it in the Kansas law as “knowingly dismembering a living unborn child and extracting such unborn child one piece at a time from the uterus.”

In a bench ruling on Thursday, Judge Larry D. Hendricks of Shawnee County District Court in Topeka said he would block the law while a lawsuit challenging it proceeds.

The suit was brought on behalf of two Kansas obstetricians – Herbert Hodes and Traci Nauser, a father and daughter who perform abortions in Overland Park – by the Center for Reproductive Rights, based in New York.

The suit contends that the law amounts to illegal interference with the right to abortion and could force some women to undergo an “invasive unnecessary medical procedure even against the medical judgment of her physician.”

The center also said previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings don’t allow a state to ban the most common method for terminating a pregnancy.

Hendricks said that although alternative abortion methods still would be legal under the law, “the alternatives do not appear to be medically necessary or reasonable.”

The law was to take effect July 1. Oklahoma became the second state to adopt such a ban, with an effective date of Nov. 1.

“I think that ultimately, we’re going to be successful,” Jessie Basgall, attorney for Kansans for Life, said after the ruling. “This is just whether or not the law is going to stand while we actually litigate the merits of this law. I believe we’re on solid ground.”

Nancy Northup, president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the center would “continue fighting this law until it is permanently struck down as a clear violation of women’s rights and the doctor-patient relationship.”

The judge also declared that the Kansas Constitution independently protects abortion rights at least as much as the U.S. Constitution does. Attorneys on both sides said such a ruling, if it stands, eventually could allow state courts to strike down restrictions that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld.

The new law would have banned doctors from using forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a fetus to remove it from the womb in pieces. Such instruments are commonly used in dilation and evacuation procedures, but Kansas legislators said using them on a fetus is inhumane.

Dilation and evacuation procedures accounted for about 9 percent of all abortions in Kansas last year, according to the state health department. The state bans most abortions at or after the 22nd week of pregnancy, and 89 percent last year occurred before the 13th week.

The new law would make exceptions to the ban to preserve a woman’s life or to prevent serious and permanent damage to her physical health. It also wouldn’t apply if doctors ensure that the fetus dies before using instruments to remove it from the womb.

The state’s lawyers argued that doctors could avoid violating the ban and still perform safe abortions many ways, such as first giving the fetus a lethal injection or by severing its umbilical cord.

But the lawsuit said there have been few studies of the safety of the alternative methods and that lethal injections for the fetus could increase nausea, vomiting and infection in women.

Contributing: New York Times, Associated Press

This story was originally published June 25, 2015 at 10:41 AM with the headline "Shawnee County judge blocks Kansas’ ban on 2nd-trimester abortion procedure."