Kansas Passes the “Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act”

Using graphic language, calling the procedure a “dismemberment abortion” more than 20 times in the three-page document, the “Kansas Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act” (SB95) promises to criminalize physicians who use “clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors, or similar instruments” to assist in abortion procedures. According to a statement in the Huffington Post, this law may prohibit abortions as early as 14 weeks.

With this extreme intrusion into medicine by Kansas politicians, women and their providers will now have to hope that the vacuum technique will be enough to perform a complete abortion. Incomplete abortions can lead to infection, which in turn leads to a greater risk for more serious health problems, the need for antibiotics, and more money and time spent. Providers may begin denying abortions that cannot be completed by vacuum aspiration alone.

This Act (SB95) was passed into law early on Tuesday, April 7th, 2015. It will go into effect July 1st, 2015.

While it has been noted that this law was most likely passed as a challenge to the Supreme Court, what was most surprising to me was the lack of action and opposition surrounding SB95. After a quick Google search, I was only able to find a few organizations that stated their opposition (or support) of the Act. In fact, it wasn’t until the bottom of the second search page that I found a post from Planned Parenthood Advocates of Kansas and Mid-Missouri – a short, opposing formula letter that could be signed and sent to Kansas representatives. Reporting on SB95 was minimal until it was passed into law.

According to a Guttmacher Institute fact sheet, “In 2011, 98% of Kansas counties had no abortion clinic. 74% of Kansas women lived in these counties”. Now is not the time to be passive about these attacks against women’s healthcare and healthcare providers. One in every three American women has had an abortion, yet access to this common procedure is still being threatened.