TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) — Doctors accused of failing to provide enough care to babies born during abortion procedures in Kansas could face lawsuits and criminal charges under a bill that has passed. final Tuesday in the Republican-controlled state Legislature.
The legislation faces an uncertain fate in a legal and political climate that has made Kansas an outlier on abortion policy among states with GOP-led legislatures.
the kansas house voted 86-36 approve a bill for the “protection of babies born alive” similar to a proposed law that Montana voters rejected in November. The Senate passed the measure last week and it passes Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who vetoed the bill in 2019.
The senate voted 31-9 for the bill last week, meaning it passed both houses with more than the two-thirds majorities needed to override a potential Kelly veto.
“We can have different views on abortion and still agree on the need for this legislation as a humanitarian issue,” said the top three representatives of the Kansas House of Representatives. republicans said in a joint statement.
Even if abortion opponents manage to override any veto, the measure could still be challenged in court and not enforced. The demands have prevented Kansas from enforcing a 2015 ban on a common second-trimester abortion procedure and a 2011 law imposing additional health and safety rules for abortion providers.
Kansas abortion opponents have not pushed to ban abortion altogether despite the US Supreme Court decision. decision in June 2022 that the Constitution of the United States allows it. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that access to abortion is a “fundamental” right under the state constitution, and in August 2022, voters roundly rejected a proposed change to remove protections for the right to abortion.
The “live birth” measure is based on the claim that abortion providers leave newborns to die if they are born during an abortion procedure. Critics of the bill said the state would intervene in difficult medical and ethical decisions between doctors and parents. They also said that parents could be forced to accept useless and expensive care.
“If the baby is born alive and only has minutes to live, the mother, the father, the family, have the right to request hospice care and hold the baby until it is no longer breathing,” said state representative Susan Ruiz. a Democrat from the Kansas City area.
The measure applies not only to “missed” or “botched” abortions, but also to cases where doctors induce labor to deliver a fetus that will not survive outside the womb. That can happen because of a serious medical problem, with the expectation that the newborn will die within minutes or even seconds.
The Kansas measure is similar to laws in 18 other states that require babies born during labor and miscarriages during delivery to go to a hospital and impose criminal penalties on doctors who fail to provide the same care as a provider. “reasonably diligent and conscientious” would provide other living doctors. births
In Kansas, failing to provide reasonable care for a newborn would be a felony, punishable by one year of probation for a first-time offender. In addition, the parents of the newborn and the parents or guardians of minors seeking abortions could sue the providers.
Like most states, Kansas does not collect data on births during induced abortion procedures. The bill would require annual reports to the state.
Anti-abortion groups argue that there are likely hundreds of live births during abortion procedures each year in the US. The argument is based on extrapolation of data from the handful of states that require reporting of such live births, as well as on data for most Canadian provinces.
“An important aspect of the bill is that it would require the reporting of abortion survivors,” said Kelsey Pritchard, spokeswoman for the national anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Supporters of abortion rights argue that the Kansas measure and laws in other states are designed to paint a misleading picture of abortion care.
In Kansas, there have been no reported abortions after the 21st week since at least 2016 and, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than 1% of the more than 600,000 abortions a year occur after the 21st week. of the 21st week of pregnancy. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that almost no fetus is viable before the 23rd week of pregnancy.
Critics of the measure also argue that existing homicide laws are sufficient to address what they see as a rare problem. They also argue that passing the measure challenges a statewide vote in August affirming abortion rights.
“This bill is absolutely unnecessary,” Democratic state Sen. Pat Pettey of Kansas City said during a debate last week. “This bill will traumatize mothers who desperately want to be mothers, who are already dealing with the heartbreaking moments of loss imaginable.”
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