(Updated to include links to how lawmakers voted and additional comment from senators.)
With drug-induced abortions rising in Kansas, the Legislature on Friday approved a bill requiring physicians to notify women that their medical abortion can be reversed.
The House and Senate passed the legislation with overwhelming majorities, positioning Kansas to become the seventh state to pass legislation based on the controversial idea that a medical abortion can be stopped halfway through a two-drug regimen.
The House approved the bill 85-35 and the Senate passed the legislation 26-11. It now goes to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who brandished her abortion rights credentials during last summer’s Democratic gubernatorial primary.
The House appears to have enough votes to override any veto by the governor. The Senate is now one vote short although three senators were absent, including two who might be inclined to vote for the bill if there is an override.
The bill requires any clinic providing medical abortions to post a sign — in at least three-quarter inch boldface type — telling women it’s possible to reverse the process once it has begun.
The bill also would require the physician to inform a woman that a medical abortion could be reversed within 24 hours of administering the drug. Women would have to be notified in writing and by telephone or in person.
Critics said the bill inserts lawmakers into the relationship between physicians and their patients. They question research that indicates a medical abortion can be reversed.
“My concern is that it is not appropriate for the Legislature to practice medicine or mandate how a physician practices medicine,” said Democratic state Sen. Barbara Bollier, a longtime supporter of abortion rights.
“An individual is being asked by us in this bill as a physician to make a statement to a woman – both verbally and in writing – that this may work,” Bollier said. “Many physicians do not agree with that.”
Republican Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a staunch opponent of abortion, said the bill gave a woman more information when deciding whether to have an abortion.
“For those who honestly say they are pro-choice and not just abortion advocates this simply gives a woman more information about what she can do to save her unborn child,” she said.
Medical abortions, also known as the abortion pill, are used during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. It’s used in about a third of all abortions nationally at eight weeks of gestation or less.
New preliminary numbers in Kansas show that drug-induced abortions made up 61 percent of all abortions last year. Five years earlier, they made up 39 percent of all abortions.
The pills are used in two steps: first with the drug mifepristone and a second with the drug misoprostol.
The first drug blocks a hormone critical for starting the pregnancy. The second drug, administered 24 to 48 hours later, flushes the uterus by causing cramping and bleeding similar to a miscarriage.
Kansas and other states have responded to research by California physician George Delgado who published a 2012 article in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy explaining how the effects of the first abortion pill could be reversed.
Delgado’s initial research said that when the hormone progesterone was introduced between the first and second pill, four of six women studied were able to bring their pregnancy to term with no birth defects.
He published an article more recently in Issues in Law and Medicine that examined a larger group of women. The latest study, published last year, examined 547 patients who took progesterone within 72 hours of taking the first abortion pill. The study found there were 257 live births.
The bill passed on Friday was amended to require physicians to report the results any time the abortion reversal protocol is used.
They must report whether the progesterone treatment fails or if it succeeds when a woman carries a pregnancy to term.
Six states — Idaho, Arkansas, South Dakota, Utah, Kentucky and North Dakota — have already passed laws requiring women to be told about the abortion reversal protocol.
Critics say there’s no credible evidence that a medical abortion can be reversed. They say it needs more rigorous study before any conclusions can be reached.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said claims about reversing abortion treatments “are not based on science and do not meet clinical standards.”
