(LifeSiteNews) – A Kansas judge has permanently blocked several pro-life rules aimed at ensuring abortion-minded women are informed of the ramifications of and alternatives to abortion.
Back in 2023, District Judge Krishnan Christopher Jayaram temporarily blocked a then-new law that required women to be informed of abortion pill reversal (APR), as well as a 1997 law imposing a 24-hour waiting period on abortion. The judge ruled the laws likely violated a state-level “fundamental right” to abortion declared by the Kansas Supreme Court in 2021.
This week, Jayaram returned to the matter, permanently striking down those laws, as well as rules requiring abortion seekers to state a reason they want to abort and that they be informed of abortion risks, the gestational age of their baby, and more.
“Because a woman’s [so-called] right to bodily autonomy (including her right to decide whether to terminate or to continue a pregnancy) is fundamental, the Court concludes, given the overwhelming evidence adduced at trial, that the State’s rationale and legislative schemes … simply do not, in significant part, survive constitutional scrutiny under Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights,” he wrote.
The timing of this ruling is deeply troubling. After waiting more than ten months to issue a decision, Judge Jayaram waited until just hours before being sworn in to the Kansas Supreme Court to strike down the Woman’s Right to Know Act, eliminating nearly 30 years of commonsense protections that helped ensure women received the information they needed before making a life-altering decision,” responded Kansans for Life communications director Mackenzie Ayers. “The ruling leaves women even more vulnerable to a predatory abortion industry that consistently puts its own profits ahead of women. Kansans for Life will continue advocating for compassionate, commonsense policies that protect mothers and babies while educating Kansans about the risks posed by the abortion industry.”
Pro-life activists support and abortion defenders oppose informed-consent policies, especially prenatal images and information about fetal heartbeats, for the same reason: their ability to convey the humanity of preborn babies and dissuade women from abortion.
Pro-life group Save the Storks says that four of five pregnant women who see one of their free ultrasounds ultimately choose life. The similar ICU Mobile says its ultrasounds have convinced 56 percent of women who had already decided on abortion to change their minds, and 87 percent of those who were undecided to choose life. In addition, a 2011 study by Quinnipiac University’s Mark Gius concluded that “ultrasound laws had a very significant and negative effect on the abortion decision.”
Audio of fetal heartbeats, which generally begin as early as six weeks, has a similar effect, leading abortion defenders to falsely claim that such sounds do not depict heartbeats at all but instead mere “electrical activity.” In fact, as explained in the medical textbook Anatomy & Physiology, the heart “begins beating and pumping blood around day 21 or 22, a mere three weeks after fertilization,” with the physical structure taking shape a week later and valves forming between weeks five and nine.
The judge likewise called abortion pill reversal, which consists of administering extra progesterone to counteract the effects of the abortion pill mifepristone (RU-486), and “untested and experimental idea with no legitimate grounding in existing, validated, peer-reviewed scientific processes or mainstream medical practice.”
However, as pro-life OB/GYN Dr. William Lile has explained, APR is based on principles that are well understood from progesterone’s common, FDA-approved use in a variety of other pregnancy-related situations. According to the Abortion Pill Rescue Network (APRN), “initial studies of APR have shown it has a 64-68% success rate.” Heartbeat International also publishes first-hand testimonials from women who have benefited from the technique.
In 2023, the academic journal Scientific Reports published a study by Franciscan University of Steubenville neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Sammut that found “progesterone, administered shortly after mifepristone, reversed the effects of mifepristone (i.e., reversed the abortion) with living fetuses present at the end of gestation in 81 percent of cases,” after months of being challenged and rejected by other publications.
“All major studies show that using progesterone to counteract a chemical abortion can be effective since it’s the very same hormone a woman’s body produces to sustain her pregnancy,” says Heartbeat International. “One study even shows an effective rate of 80 percent. Progesterone has been safely used with pregnant women and their babies since the 1950s. To date, statistics show more than 4,500 women have had successful abortion pill reversals and that number grows higher each day.”
Despite labeling itself “pro-choice,” the abortion movement is notoriously hostile to any and all types of alternatives to abortion, from publicity campaigns to malign crisis pregnancy centers as “deceptive,” to attempt to strip medical licenses from pro-life doctors, to violence and threats against pregnancy centers that are less likely to be prosecuted than purported cases of anti-abortion violence.
