CNA Staff, May 1, 2024 / 05:30 am
Kansas state legislators enacted four pro-life bills over the abortion-supporting governor’s vetoes but didn’t enact a bill that would have banned gender transitioning for children.
The abortion measures provide $2 million in state funding for pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, provide tax credits designed to encourage more donations to such centers, require abortion facilities to ask women why they are having an abortion, and create a new crime of coercing a woman to have an abortion.
Supporters put together the necessary two-thirds majorities to override the vetoes of Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat who supports legal abortion.
Crafters of the pro-life bills acknowledge that abortion is legally considered a fundamental right in Kansas, since the state’s supreme court declared that in April 2019 and the state’s voters in August 2022 rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have flipped the court’s decision.