A new abortion clinic will open in southeast Kansas this fall, bolstering the state’s role as a regional hub for reproductive health services whose neighbors have severely restricted access since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains announced Tuesday that Pittsburg, Kansas, will be home to a new facility providing abortion procedures and pills, as well as pregnancy services, contraception, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

After the Roe reversal, Kansas was the first state where voters weighed in on abortion at the ballot box, resoundingly rejecting a constitutional amendment that could have led to an abortion ban in August 2022.

Since then, the state — which prohibits abortions after 21 weeks of pregnancy — has become a destination for people from more restrictive nearby states seeking abortion.

In March 2023, 44% of abortion patients at Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas traveled more than 250 miles (402 kilometers), compared with just 1% two years earlier, according to the organization. More than half of abortion patients are now from Texas, and some have come from as far as Florida in recent weeks, said Emily Wales, president and chief executive officer of Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains.

“You walk across the state line from Missouri to Kansas and you automatically become a freer person who can actually take care of your medical needs in a different way,” Wales said. “We see it on the faces of patients who literally breathe easier when they get into Kansas.”

The abortion landscape across the U.S. has been in flux after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision that revoked a constitutional right to abortion nationwide.

New bans or restrictions have taken effect in most Republican-led states, including 14 where abortion is now outlawed in all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions, and three more where it’s banned after about six weeks of pregnancy – often before women realize they’re pregnant.

For people from those states seeking to end their pregnancies, the main options are either getting abortion pills via telehealth or underground networks, or traveling out of state for abortion pills or procedures.

There were roughly as many in-state residents as out-of-state residents seeking abortions in Kansas in the years before the Supreme Court decision, according to statistics reported to and published by the state’s health department. That’s largely because Kansas City, Kansas, is easily accessible from Missouri, which historically has been limited in providers of abortion services.

In 2022, the figure for out-of-state residents given consent forms more than doubled to 8,475, state data shows.

Pittsburg, Kansas, is more than 100 miles (161 kilometers) south of Kansas City, and 150 miles (241 kilometers) east of Wichita. That means the new clinic location will be hours closer to patients who may be traveling from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma — and even as far as Louisiana or Texas — where the procedure is restricted.

Pittsburg itself has a dearth of providers for contraception and other sexual health services, Wales said, but it has the “added benefit of being so closely located to neighboring states.” The Pittsburg facility will later provide gender-affirming services as well.

Clinics are shifting to accommodate out-of-state demand elsewhere, too. New Mexico has pledged $10 million to a new facility in Las Cruces, near the Texas border; a clinic opened last year in Western Maryland, a few miles from West Virginia; and two new clinics have opened in the southern Illinois city of Carbondale.

Ingrid Duran, director of state legislation for National Right to Life, said it’s not surprising to see new clinics pop up to meet out-of-state demand because of the financial opportunity for providers, she said.

“And it’s not surprising to know that people who want to get abortions would travel out of the state if it’s not being offered there,” she said. She said states should also offer resources that “hopefully persuade abortion-minded women to choose something different.”

Caitlin Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College who researches abortion policies, said she’s counted 78 abortion facilities opening across the U.S. between May 1, 2022, and April 1 of this year. That number includes 10 moved from another location in the same state, seven that moved across state lines and 61 new providers.

The growth in providers situated near state lines has generated new efforts from those opposed to abortion to restrict the practice, calling it “abortion trafficking.”

A Texas man is trying to force his former partner to say who helped her obtain an out-of-state abortion in a step toward civil enforcement of the Texas abortion ban.

Lawmakers in at least two states have taken aim at people who help minors access abortion without parental consent. Tennessee legislators last month passed a bill that would make it illegal to help minors obtain abortions without parental consent; Republican Gov. Bill Lee has not yet taken action on it. Idaho adopted a similar law last year, though a federal judge has blocked enforcement while its constitutionality is questioned.

Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly is a strong supporter of abortion rights, but the GOP-controlled Legislature has veto-proof majorities and strong contingents opposed to abortion.

This year, the Legislature passed bills — and later overrode Kelly’s vetoes — for statutes that will require abortion providers to ask patients why they are terminating their pregnancies and report the answers to the state, and that will make it a specific crime to coerce someone into having an abortion.

___

Fingerhut reported from Oakland, New Jersey, and Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF) – A Kansas man was arrested after a brief stand-off with the Fairbanks Criminal Suppression Unit in the Bentley Mall parking lot on May 7.

Thirty-nine-year-old Levi Hart of Montgomery County, Kansas was wanted for multiple felony drug manufacturing and trafficking charges, as well as failure to appear in court, when he left his home state.

“The information that was passed on to us was that he had no intentions of going back to jail, and that he was possibly armed,” said Alaska State Trooper Trevor Norris, a member of the Criminal Suppression Unit.

“In kind of a stroke of luck for us, by the time we got the information on what he was likely wearing and driving he happened to show up where a surveillance unit was parked in about an hour,” Norris explained.

Multiple law enforcement units were able to enter the area without alerting the suspect. Hart turned out to be unarmed, and surrendered after a short stand-off.

“He told us at the time that he was debating on whether to flee or to end the confrontation some other way,” Norris said. “But at the end of the day he said that he didn’t think Alaska would arrest on outstanding warrants from out of state. And I’m here to tell you that a great way to meet the Criminal Suppression Unit is to come up to Fairbanks with extraditable warrants. Alaska will extradite fugitives from justice.”

Hart was remanded to the Fairbanks Correctional Center to await extradition to Kansas.

Copyright 2024 KWCH. All rights reserved. To report a correction or typo, please email news@kwch.com

With election season bearing down on us like an overzealous predator animal, I’d like to take a quick moment to focus on responsibility.

The chattering class, of which I’m a longtime member, likes to chatter about the responsibility of both politicians and the news media. Lawmakers and journalists should tell us the truth, but they owe us more than mere facts. They should, commenters emphasize, dedicate themselves to principles of representative democracy and civic virtue.

The ultimate responsibility, though, rests on the shoulders of a far larger group. I’m talking about voters. That’s right, the millions of men and women, young and old, Black and white and every color in between, who cast their ballots in primary and general elections. You all have a job to do as well.

A fair number of you have been falling short.

I know you all assume I’m writing about a certain New York real estate developer-turned-politician. He shadows a lot of these conversations. But let’s set him and his strongman act aside. Here in Kansas, voters have enabled a system that stymies exactly the policies that they tell pollsters they want.

They want an expanded Medicaid program. They want recreational marijuana — not even medical marijuana — legalized. They want schools fully funded and a sensible tax structure. Their responses remain consistent over the years, at least according to Fort Hays State University’s Kansas Speaks Poll. Yet these same voters have continued to elect supermajorities of hardcore conservative Republicans to the House and Senate who stand squarely against all of these proposals.

Voters have chosen this course.

What’s the matter?

None of this should come as a surprise. We’ve been doing this in Kansas for decades, and a particularly well-known book lays it all out. Yes, Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” captured hearts and minds and attention two decades ago. Yet the elections keep coming, and the choices keep being made.

Washburn University political science professor Bob Beatty pointed to Frank’s work in trying to explain why voters choose politicians who pursue policies contrary to their interests.

“A political party can be effective in making certain issues that might not affect a lot of people be prioritized over issues that these people might support and also may influence them directly,” Beatty wrote me in an email.

In other words, GOP candidates weaponize issues such as immigration, election security, crime and “critical race theory” — all non-factors in Kansas — to advance other goals.

But perhaps there’s a simpler explanation, according to the professor.

“Party identification is the greatest indicator of vote choice, still, in American elections, according to all data,” Beatty wrote. “Primaries in Kansas feature very low turnout, especially for legislative races, and the people who do turn out tend to be more conservative (sometimes much more conservative) than the general population. So, if a conservative Republican wins a primary, even if they’ve got a more moderate district overall, then party ID will kick in.”

Analysis from KFF shows that only 59% of eligible voters in Kansas actually cast ballots in the 2022 elections. That means 41% of those older than 18 who could potentially cast a ballot chose not to do so when Election Day rolled around.

Crunching data from the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office and the Census Bureau shows that a substantial number of Kansans don’t even register. Roughly 2.25 million people in the state were above the age of 18 as of July 1, 2023. Only 1.95 million had registered to vote. That works out to about 300,000 going unregistered.

You can’t have a say if you don’t raise your voice.

Our priorities

Over the weekend, several friends and I played a gigantic strategic board game called Twilight Imperium.

In the game, you play one of several alien races battling for power and influence in the galaxy. Playing requires not only understanding two books’ worth of rules, but navigating plastic spaceships across a map assembled from hexagonal tiles. As gameplay progresses, you also draw dozens of cards with potential actions and ways to score points, both publicly and secretly.

Playing a full game of Twilight Imperium can take seven to eight hours, although that’s a best-case scenario if all players know the game well and can leap into action. Our particular game took 10 hours, spread across a Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

Believe me, this does have to do with voting. Please bear with me.

Intensely complicated strategy board games may not be your idea of a good time. But many people become intensely involved in various hobbies. Folks of all ages play complex and absorbing video games, which transport them to other worlds while including dense screens full of statistics. A different group of enthusiasts play fantasy sports, in which building and adjusting your own team throughout a season can involve detailed research and even spreadsheets.

We don’t play Twilight Imperium or video games or fantasy football because these pursuits earn us a salary. We enjoy them. We blow off steam and spend time with friends. Yet you cannot ignore that doing so involves learning and manipulating reams of intricate data that have nothing to do with our day-to-day lives.

So why can’t we take a fraction of that absorption and critical thought and put it toward our shared civic conversation?

Why don’t voters step up to participating in their state and nation’s government with the same enthusiasm as they do toward drafting their fantasy team?

Once upon a time, perhaps when “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” came out, a certain ignorance of the internet or 24/7 news cycle could be excused. The world had changed quickly. Yet we’ve now lived more than three decades with the web, two decades with social media and 17 years with the iPhone. If you don’t understand the technology by now, that’s on you.

Multiple resources online separate fact from fiction. Reporters and news sources across the country, including Kansas Reflector, tackle this work every day. If you want to separate legitimate news from misinformation and disinformation, you can.

Each one of us has a responsibility to our state, country and shared future. Each one of us — including voters — should take that seriously.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.