{"id":5356,"date":"2016-01-22T18:54:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T18:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2016\/01\/22\/evenly-divided-kansas-appeals-court-blocks-2015-abortion-law\/"},"modified":"2016-01-22T18:54:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T18:54:00","slug":"evenly-divided-kansas-appeals-court-blocks-2015-abortion-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/evenly-divided-kansas-appeals-court-blocks-2015-abortion-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Evenly Divided Kansas Appeals Court Blocks 2015 Abortion Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-style:italic;font-size:16px\">By  <a class=\"colorbox\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thetwo-way\/2016\/01\/22\/463989675\/evenly-divided-kansas-appeals-court-blocks-2015-abortion-law?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=healthcare\">Bill Chappell<\/a><\/span>  <\/p>\n<p>A first-of-its-kind Kansas law that bans a common method of performing second-trimester abortions has been blocked, as judges on the state&#8217;s Court of Appeals conclude that the procedure is protected by rights of due process and equal protection.<\/p>\n<p>The law was blocked after the court&#8217;s full roster of judges split evenly, 7-7 \u2014 an outcome that by law affirms a lower court&#8217;s injunction. The case is expected to be reviewed by the Kansas Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>The widely watched case was initiated by three doctors, who <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-usa-abortion-kansas-idUSKBN0OH39Q20150601\">filed a lawsuit<\/a> weeks before the law was to take effect last summer. One key legal issue: whether the Kansas Constitution provides a right to abortion.<\/p>\n<p>Distilling several pages of citations from the Kansas Constitution and the state&#8217;s Supreme Court, <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kscourts.org\/Cases-and-Opinions\/opinions\/CtApp\/2016\/20160122\/114153.pdf\">the appellate court&#8217;s opinion states<\/a>, &#8220;we discern a simple proposition: The rights of Kansas women in 2016 are not limited to those specifically intended by the men who drafted our state&#8217;s constitution in 1859.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On the other side of the issue, six of the opposing judges wrote, &#8220;there is nothing within the text or history of&#8230; the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights to lead this court to conclude that these provisions were intended to guarantee a right to abortion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kslegislature.org\/li\/b2015_16\/measures\/documents\/sb95_00_0000.pdf\">law in question<\/a> is titled the &#8220;Kansas Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act.&#8221; <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2015\/04\/17\/400081913\/kansas-becomes-first-state-to-ban-second-trimester-abortion-procedure\">As NPR reported<\/a> last summer, the law, with few exceptions, would ban what physicians call a &#8220;dilation and evacuation&#8221; or &#8220;D&amp;E&#8221; abortion, the primary method for second-trimester abortions in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>The court&#8217;s ruling was released on the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in <em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service &#8211; if this is your content and you&#8217;re reading it on someone else&#8217;s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org\/content-only\/faq.php#publishers.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Source:: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thetwo-way\/2016\/01\/22\/463989675\/evenly-divided-kansas-appeals-court-blocks-2015-abortion-law?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=healthcare\" class=\"colorbox\" title=\"Evenly Divided Kansas Appeals Court Blocks 2015 Abortion Law\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thetwo-way\/2016\/01\/22\/463989675\/evenly-divided-kansas-appeals-court-blocks-2015-abortion-law?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=healthcare<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A first-of-its-kind Kansas law that bans a common method of performing second-trimester abortions has been blocked, as judges on the state&#8217;s Court of Appeals conclude that the procedure is protected by rights of due process and equal protection.<\/p>\n<p>The law was blocked after the court&#8217;s full roster of judges split evenly, 7-7 \u2014 an outcome that by law affirms a lower court&#8217;s injunction. The case is expected to be reviewed by the Kansas Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>The widely watched case was initiated by three doctors, who <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-usa-abortion-kansas-idUSKBN0OH39Q20150601\">filed a lawsuit<\/a> weeks before the law was to take effect last summer. One key legal issue: whether the Kansas Constitution provides a right to abortion.<\/p>\n<p>Distilling several pages of citations from the Kansas Constitution and the state&#8217;s Supreme Court, <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kscourts.org\/Cases-and-Opinions\/opinions\/CtApp\/2016\/20160122\/114153.pdf\">the appellate court&#8217;s opinion states<\/a>, &#8220;we discern a simple proposition: The rights of Kansas women in 2016 are not limited to those specifically intended by the men who drafted our state&#8217;s constitution in 1859.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On the other side of the issue, six of the opposing judges wrote, &#8220;there is nothing within the text or history of&#8230; the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights to lead this court to conclude that these provisions were intended to guarantee a right to abortion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kslegislature.org\/li\/b2015_16\/measures\/documents\/sb95_00_0000.pdf\">law in question<\/a> is titled the &#8220;Kansas Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act.&#8221; <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2015\/04\/17\/400081913\/kansas-becomes-first-state-to-ban-second-trimester-abortion-procedure\">As NPR reported<\/a> last summer, the law, with few exceptions, would ban what physicians call a &#8220;dilation and evacuation&#8221; or &#8220;D&amp;E&#8221; abortion, the primary method for second-trimester abortions in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>The court&#8217;s ruling was released on the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in <em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service &#8211; if this is your content and you&#8217;re reading it on someone else&#8217;s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org\/content-only\/faq.php#publishers.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}