Kansas lawmakers want to make it a crime to coerce an abortion, but not coercing pregnancy
Kansas lawmakers are proceeding with a bill to criminalize coercing someone to get an abortion, but without an amendment to criminalize coercing someone to get or stay pregnant.
"What we're doing is we're standing up for women who have made it clear that they want to keep their baby, and they're being threatened and pushed into aborting," said Rep. Rebecca Schmoe, R-Ottawa. "A lot of that has to do with human trafficking."
The House on Monday passed House Bill 2436 after the Senate passed it last week. The bill now goes to the governor with apparent veto-proof majorities.
"If a woman has expressed her desire to continue the pregnancy and someone threatens her, whether it is to harm her physically, whether it's to harm her financially or whether it is to pull documentation in the face of someone who has been trafficked, then that would now be punishable as a crime," Schmoe said.
The new felony crime would generally be punishable by between 30 days and one year in prison and a fine of between $500 and $5,000. The sentence could be harsher if the father is an adult and the mother is a minor.
Lawmakers rejected broadening the bill to cover coerced pregnancy
At its annual March and Rally for Life at the Statehouse in January, Kansans for Life announced a legislative agenda that included several anti-abortion priorities. One of them was establishing penalties for abortion coercion.
"For those who believe abortion should be a 'woman's choice,' I ask you to join us in support of HB 2813 to ensure that it truly is her choice and not someone else's," KFL lobbyist Jeanne Gawdun said in written testimony.
The House started with House Bill 2813. A committee amended the bill to broaden it. Instead of only applying to coercing an abortion, it would also apply to other issues of reproductive autonomy, including coercing someone to become pregnant or interfering with contraception use.
In written testimony, Michelle McCormick, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, urged the Legislature to take "address all forms of reproductive control."
Rep. Stephanie Sawyer Clayton, D-Overland Park, said she was grateful to Republican legislators for supporting an amendment to do that, even though it was stripped out.
"There are abusive relationships out there where people work to keep their partners pregnant because that makes it more difficult for them to leave," she said.
The amended version of the bill never got a vote on the House floor. Instead, the House took up the Senate version.
In caucus, Schmoe told her fellow Republicans that the House amendment "changed the direction of the bill" and called the Senate version "clean" because it didn't have that amendment. The Senate started with Senate Bill 527, but did a gut-and-go to put the contents in HB 2436, which is what passed the Legislature.
"We do need to make sure that we are looking at our domestic violence laws that we currently have and ensuring that we are not crossing any lines of coercing a woman to be pregnant against her will, this was not that bill," Schmoe said.
Bill could criminalize a breakup or seeking a divorce
When the House took up the Senate version on Monday, because of the legislative procedures used, representatives could not amend the bill before voting.
Rep. Jo Ella Hoye, D-Lenexa, said she was disappointed by that. She said, "There is a lot of agreement on the underlying subject matter of this bill," but she had been working on amendments because, "I just feel like we didn't work through this enough to work out some of the other technical issues."
She said her biggest concern was that threatening divorce could meet the definition of coercing an abortion.
"If you don't agree on a pregnancy outcome for abortion, I do think that should be able to be cause for divorce," Hoye said. "I don't think we should create a crime that would charge somebody if they just say, 'Hey, if you don't get an abortion, we're going to get divorced.' I think that does goes too far."
Likewise, Rep. Ford Carr, D-Wichita, took issue with potentially criminalizing an unmarried father ending a relationship with the pregnant mother and moving out because she wouldn't get an abortion.
Jason Alatidd is a Statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jalatidd@gannett.com. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas lawmakers pass bill to criminalize abortion coercion
