Doctors accused of not providing enough care to babies delivered alive during certain types of abortion procedures in Kansas could face lawsuits and criminal charges under a bill that was finally approved Tuesday in the Republican-controlled state legislature.

The legislation awaits an uncertain fate in a legal and political climate that has made Kansas an outlier in interstate abortion policy with GOP-led legislators. The law applies not only to botched or botched abortions, but also when doctors induce labor to deliver a fetus that is expected to die outside the hospital within minutes or even seconds.

uterus

uterus, which often occurs because of a serious medical problem.

The Kansas House voted 86 to 36 in favor of a proposed law protecting live births, similar to one that Montana voters rejected in November. The Senate passed the measure last week and it goes alongside the Democratic administration. Laura Kelly, who vetoed such a bill in 2019.

The Senate last week voted 31 to 9 in favor of the bill, meaning it passed both chambers with more than the two-thirds majority needed to override a potential Kelly veto.

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We can disagree on abortion and still agree on the need for this legislation as a humanitarian issue, the three top Republicans in the Kansas House said in a joint statement.

Even if abortion opponents manage to override a veto, the measure could still be challenged in court and not enforced. Lawsuits have prevented Kansas from enforcing a 2015 ban on a common second-trimester abortion procedure and a 2011 law imposing additional health and safety regulations on abortion providers.

Kansas abortion opponents have not pushed for a full ban on abortion, despite the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that the U.S. Constitution allows it. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that access to abortion is a fundamental right under the state constitution, and in August

2022

voters firmly rejected a proposed amendment to remove protections from abortion rights.

The live birth measure is based on the claim that abortion providers leave newborns to die if they are delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Critics of the bill said the state would intervene in difficult medical and ethical decisions between doctors and parents. They also said parents could be forced to accept useless and expensive care.

If the child is born alive and has minutes to live, the mother, father and family have the right to seek palliative care and hug the child until it stops breathing, said State Representative Susan Ruiz, a Kansas Democrat. of the city region.

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The Kansas measure is similar to laws in 18 other states that require babies to be delivered alive during childbirth and abortions to go to a hospital during childbirth and impose criminal penalties on doctors who fail to provide the same care “with a reasonably diligent and conscientious caregiver would do with other live births.

In Kansas, failure to provide reasonable care for such a newborn would be a felony, punishable by a year’s probation for a first-time offender. Also, the parents of the newborn and the parents or guardians of minors who want to have an abortion can sue providers.

Like most states, Kansas does not collect data on births during induced abortion procedures or other abortion procedures. The bill would require annual reports to the state.

Anti-abortion groups claim that hundreds of babies are probably delivered alive each year in the US during abortion procedures. The argument is based on extrapolation from data from the handful of states that require reports of such live births, as well as data from most Canadian provinces.

An important aspect of the bill is that it would require reporting on abortion survivors, said Kelsey Pritchard, spokesperson for the national anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

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Abortion rights advocates argue that the measure in Kansas and laws in other states are designed to paint a misleading picture of abortion care.

No abortions after the 21st week have been reported in Kansas since at least 2016, and less than 1% of the more than 600,000 abortions per year occur after the 21st week of pregnancy, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says almost no fetus is viable before the 23rd week of pregnancy.

Critics of the measure also argue that existing laws against homicide are sufficient to address what they consider a rare problem. They also claim that passing the measure violates the nationwide vote in August that affirmed the right to abortion.

This bill is absolutely necessary, Democratic State Senator Pat Pettey from Kansas City said during a debate last week. This bill will traumatize mothers who desperately want to be mothers who are already dealing with the

most

heartbreaking moments of loss imaginable.