The Kansas Supreme Court announced Wednesday that they have scheduled oral arguments for 9a.m. March 16, on the matter of a blocked ban on dismemberment abortions.
It’s been 11 months since the Kansas Supreme Court was asked to review two lower court decisions upholding a temporary injunction against the first-in-the nation Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act, passed in April 2015.
The first state court decision was made by Shawnee District Judge Larry Hendricks, ruling in favor of a father /daughter abortion duo, Herb Hodes & Traci Nauser, who had already sued two other state pro-life laws. The second ruling was a split decision from the state Court of Appeals, which settled nothing. While this matter proceeds, all three Hodes/Nauser lawsuits are on hold.
The case before the Kansas Supreme Court is more than just a ruling on one method of abortion because the
legal attack needs the Court to declare a state right to abortion, one more broad and extreme that that created by Roe v Wade.
As described by one appellate court justice, G. Gordon Atcheson, the newly asserted state abortion right would undermine the Kansas pro-life protective laws currently allowable under Roe v Wade.
Kansans for Life agrees with State Attorney General, Derek Schmidt, that there is no such thing as a state constitutional right to abortion.
When adopted in 1859, the Kansas Constitution did not state, nor intend to create, a ‘right’ to abortion. In fact, in that same year, just before the adoption of the Constitution, the Kansas state legislature passed a law making it a crime to kill an unborn child by abortion. This law was in effect for over 100 years.
The Kansas Attorney General urged last February that the injunction be dropped, but the Court bided its time, during which, five justices up for retention election in November narrowly retained their seats. Only one justice had the support of pro-lifers.
The Lawrence Journal World described the issue of the March hearing as a legal challenge over a “law banning a certain type of abortion procedure commonly used in second-trimester abortions, a procedure that abortion opponents call ‘dismemberment abortions.’”
The AP Wire service was more clear when reporting that the case revolves around “a 2015 law that bans doctors from using forceps, tongs or other medical implements to dismember a fetus in the womb to complete an abortion.”
The legal matter is not whether the state legislature’s dismemberment ban was justified, but on the argument that abortion advocates will likely win at trial, when they can assert a Court ratified state right to abortion as fundamental to women’s liberty interest.
Planned Parenthood had this pat comment yesterday, “We’re hopeful the court will see this for what it is, which is politicians attempting to practice medicine and endangering women in the process.”
Pro-lifers are hoping the Court sees what is always very much overlooked in these reports — the innocent, fully-formed little human beings facing a torturous and unjustifiable death.
What are the “liberty interests” of those little boys and girls?
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