Planned Parenthood Sues Over New Kansas Abortion Law
— Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit Thursday over a new Kansas law requiring doctors to inform women seeking abortions that they’re ending the life of a “whole, separate, unique, living human being.”
Planned Parenthood’s clinic in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park and its director, Dr. Orrin Moore, contend in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that the law violates doctors’ free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They say the statement that an abortion terminates the life of a separate human being requires them to make “a misleading statement of philosophical and/or religious belief.”
The new Kansas requirements take effect next month.
“It’s called compelled speech, which is a violation of the First Amendment,” Peter Brownlie, the Planned Parenthood chapter’s president and chief executive officer, said during an interview. “The Legislature is attempting to force us to endorse the political views of the governor and his allies.”