By RACHEL MIPRO
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Kansas had a record-breaking number of out-of-state patients receiving abortions in 2022, following a national rollback of reproductive rights.
Physicians reported a total of 12,318 instances of medical abortions in the state in 2022, according to a preliminary report released by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, which produces annual abortion reports.
While the total number of abortions for the year isn’t the highest number ever reported — the year 1999 had a recorded 12,445 abortions, 6,029 of which were out-of-state patients — it is the highest number of out-of-state abortions reported since the report began in 1981, and the largest increase in abortions from year to year.
In 2022, 8,475 out-of-state patients received abortions in Kansas, marking an increase from 2021, when 7,849 total abortion procedures were performed in the state.
In 2022, the mifepristone pill accounted for 59.6% of the abortions in Kansas. About 60% of patients terminated their pregnancy before the first nine weeks, and 88.3% within the first 12 weeks. One abortion occurred outside of 22 weeks, Kansas’ legal abortion threshold, due to a nonviable fetus.
Ten girls younger than 14 received an abortion in Kansas, and 290 patients between the ages of 14 and 17 received abortions, according to the report.
Danielle Underwood, Kansans for Life’s Director of Communications, said the organization predicted this increase.
“As we predicted, Kansas has seen a massive increase in the number of vulnerable women being intentionally funneled to abortion facilities in Kansas,” Underwood said. “Behind each of these statistics is an industry eager to pad its bottom line, a woman who has been pushed to feel she has no other option and a child who will never blow out her first birthday candle.”
The organization called on KDHE to provide the report earlier this month, following unusual delays in the release. The agency typically releases the annual abortion report in March.
The rise in abortion comes after increasing restrictions. On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court released its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning the federal right to terminate a pregnancy.
Since the Dobbs ruling, 15 states have enacted full or partial abortion bans, while others have implemented restrictions such as gestational limits. Several of Kansas’ neighboring states, including Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas, have banned abortion, and Nebraska has a 12-week ban.
Unlike its neighboring states, Kansas has repeatedly upheld reproductive protections. A Kansas Supreme Court ruling in 2019 determined the state’s constitutional right to bodily autonomy includes the right to terminate a pregnancy, and voters in August 2022 overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment to eliminate that right.
In a Friday news release marking the anniversary of Dobbs, Emily Wales, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said the organization would continue to focus on reproductive rights.
“Today serves as a somber reminder of the overwhelming loss of Roe and its impact on patients’ fundamental right to control their bodies, lives, and futures,” Wales said. “For the past year, we have lived through the challenges this man-made health crisis has created for the region. Despite it all, there have been incredible moments of hope and light in this past year – from Kansans’ overwhelming vote to protect care to the many ways our staff, supporters, and volunteers have stepped in to help patients.”