A Kansas judge blocked a state law that banned doctors from prescribing abortion pills via telemedicine. Kansas has been a battleground state for abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year, ending the national constitutional right to an abortion.
The ruling comes just months after Kansas voters rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have given the state more power to restrict and regulate abortion.
The vote in Kansas was the first time since Roe was overturned in late June that Americans had weighed in on the issue.
Shawnee County District Court Judge Teresa Watson granted a Wichita reproductive clinic’s request for a temporary injunction. It came after the Kansas Court of Appeals overturned her previous ruling.
Watson initially denied the clinic’s request for an injunction. However, the appeals court in June found that Watson “diverged from well-established Kansas caselaw” in her decision and sent the issue back to the lower court, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.
“This decision will further open up abortion care in Kansas at a time it’s urgently needed,” Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. The center filed the lawsuit on behalf of the clinic, Trust Women, in 2019.
“In this post-Roe world, telemedicine can make the difference in being able to receive abortion care or not,” Northup added. “Today’s decision paves the way for Kansas abortion clinics to expand services to women in remote, underserved areas of Kansas.”
Kansas is not the only state seeing a massive fight over abortion rights.
Abortion rights advocates also saw major successes in this month’s midterm elections.
Voters in Kentucky and Montana rejected antiabortion measures, while those in California, Michigan, and Vermont supported measures to enshrine reproductive rights in their state constitutions.
Anti-abortion groups, however, won in Georgia. A legal battle over the state’s six-week abortion ban saw the state Supreme Court put a lower court ruling on hold and reinstate the strict ban.
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