After Backlash, Kansas Officials Soften Abortion Rules That Threatened To Shutdown Every Clinic In The State

This summer, Kansas passed an anti-choice law with such strict regulations on abortion clinics that it effectively made it the first state where a woman would not be able to get an abortion. A federal judge temporarily blocked the law’s enforcement and, after facing such backlash, Kansas officials are now removing some of the onerous regulations. The new rules, to take effect Nov. 14, “no longer specify required patient room sizes and give clinics wider latitude to adjust a room’s temperature. They also pare down the list of required medications and equipment doctors need to have on hand.” The extremity of the previous rules were intended to — and nearly succeeded — in shutting down all the abortion clinics in Kansas. The Center for Reproductive Rights notes, however, that the rules still “remain unacceptable, imposing unnecessary and unreasonable requirements that will prevent physicians from providing the full range of reproductive health services to the women of Kansas.”