READ MORE: Kansas push to define sex decried as erasing transgender people Powell, who served on the state Court of Appeals before joining the Kansas attorney general’s office, said abortion issues can’t be resolved by “judicial fiat.” Voters soundly rejected the measure.īut Kansas Solicitor General Tony Powell, representing the state, said last year’s vote “doesn’t matter” and shouldn’t factor into the court’s decisions on these two lawsuits because the state constitution ultimately wasn’t changed since the ballot measure was defeated. That led the Legislature to put a proposed amendment on last August’s ballot asking voters whether to lift that constitutional protection, which would have allowed lawmakers to greatly restrict or ban abortion.

Constitution doesn’t protect abortion rights and that states can ban abortion, but the Kansas court had ruled in 2019 that access to abortion is protected as a matter of bodily autonomy under the state constitution. Supreme Court declared in June 2022 that the U.S. Legal challenges have blocked both laws from being enforced. One lawsuit challenges a 2015 law banning a common second-trimester abortion procedure, and the other challenges a 2011 law that regulates abortion providers more strictly than other health care providers. The justices heard arguments from attorneys for Kansas and abortion providers in two lawsuits but isn’t likely to rule for months. The state Supreme Court is considering exactly how far the Republican-controlled Legislature can go in restricting abortion under a 2019 decision protecting abortion rights. (AP) - Kansas’ highest court signaled Monday that it still considers access to abortion a “fundamental” right under the state constitution, as an attorney for the state argued that a decisive statewide vote last year affirming abortion rights “doesn’t matter.”

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