Kansas Amendments Would Neutralize State Supreme Court Decision

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TOPEKA, Kan. (ChurchMilitant.com) - Herbert Hodes and Traci Nauser, a father-daughter late-term abortion team, believed so strongly that Kansas women should be able to dismember their offspring while in the womb that they took the people of Kansas to court in order to prevent them from banning the procedure. And they won in a 6–1 Kansas Supreme Court decision handed down in April of last year.

Now, Kansas legislators and pro-life activists are scrambling to cancel out the 6–1 Kansas Supreme Court decision with a constitutional amendment that would recognize that there is no "right to an abortion" in the state of Kansas.

Justice Caleb Stegall was the lone dissenter in the 2019 decision. He noted that U.S. Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — both liberals — have characterized dismemberment abortions as "brutal" and "gruesome."

From the pro-abortionists' point of view, the judicial ruling was the mother of all Kansas court decisions in regard to abortion.

It not only wiped out the dismemberment ban, but swept an arm across the table, sending all abortion regulation to the floor. In the area of abortion regulation, all bets were off, making Kansas an "anything goes" pro-abortion state.

Furthermore, the High Court ruling means that even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion will remain legal in the state of Kansas because the court has decided that there is a right to abortion embedded in and protected by Section 1 of the state's constitution. The ruling invokes belief in "personal autonomy, which includes the ability to control one's own body, to assert bodily integrity, and the right to self-determination."

After an expedited vote last week, both Republican-controlled House and Senate committees approved a constitutional amendment that the pro-life coalition is calling "Value Them Both."

The next step is to get the amendment endorsed by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, then win a simple majority of Kansans voting in the August 2020 election.

Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle, who is running for U.S. Senate, told a pro-life gathering that the amendment will be a priority this year.

According to Lifesite, "Archbishop Joseph Naumann, of the archdiocese in Kansas City, Kansas, said at the gathering Kansans should 'correct the error, the injustice, that our Supreme Court inflicted on the people of the state.'" Nauman is chairman of the U.S. bishops' Pro-Life Activities.

Kansas isn't the only state to have its pro-life legislation hijacked by a state supreme court ruling. In West Virginia a court ruling has forced the state to fund abortions. Meanwhile Iowa, Louisiana and Kentucky are all considering pro-life amendments to their constitutions.

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