Planned Parenthood has taken legal action by filing a lawsuit against Kansas to prevent the enforcement of a new law that mandates healthcare providers to inform patients about the possibility of reversing a medication abortion, despite lacking evidence to support such claims, Your Content has learned.
The lawsuit, brought forth by a group of doctors and filed in the District Court of Johnson County, also challenges existing requirements that force providers to warn patients about a non-existent link between abortion and breast cancer.
Additionally, providers are currently compelled to wait at least 30 minutes after a consultation before performing an abortion.
Reviews conducted by the U.S. National Cancer Institute have definitively concluded that there is no connection between abortion and breast cancer.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach’s office did not provide an immediate response to the lawsuit.
In April, Kansas Republican lawmakers passed a bill amending longstanding legislation, which already imposed mandatory patient counseling and a waiting period before abortions.
The state’s Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, had vetoed the bill, but the legislature subsequently overrode the veto.
Medication abortion involves the use of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol.
The new Kansas law mandates doctors to inform patients that the effects of mifepristone can be reversed by a high dose of the hormone progesterone, prior to taking misoprostol.
The only clinical trial on this process was terminated prematurely due to severe bleeding experienced by three out of twelve patients, necessitating hospitalization.
Planned Parenthood argues in the lawsuit that the requirement to suggest “experimental and potentially dangerous treatments” violates medical ethics and exposes the plaintiffs to disciplinary action or legal liabilities.
Furthermore, the organization claims that the entire patient counseling law for abortion undermines the principles of bodily integrity, decisional autonomy, and infringes upon doctors’ freedom of speech.
Medication abortion gained national attention when a federal judge in Texas suspended the approval of mifepristone in April.
The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily halted that ruling while the Biden administration appeals the decision.
Following the elimination of the federal constitutional right to abortion by the Supreme Court last year, many states led by Republican lawmakers have enacted abortion bans. However, abortion remains legal in Kansas, according to U.S. News.
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