Numbers Show Why Voters Must Pass the VALUE THEM BOTH Amendment
(Topeka, KS – June 3, 2021)
Alarm bells keep ringing about last week’s Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) “Abortions in Kansas, 2020” report.
Kansans for Life (KFL) released a recent statement regarding the report, which showed a 16% increase in out of state visitors seeking abortion and 9% overall increase in the number of abortions performed in 2020 over 2019. To expand further upon our findings, the most dramatic increases in year over year numbers came from the state of Arkansas (85 percent increase), Oklahoma (225 percent increase), and a staggering 1,056% increase in the number of Texans who traveled to Kansas for abortions in the midst of the stay-at-home orders during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To put this into real perspective,” said Danielle Underwood, KFL director of communications, “the 626 additional abortions in Kansas during 2020 translates into the number of seniors who should have just completed their last year of secondary education at Wichita Heights and Shawnee Mission North high schools – combined. All those future leaders – teachers, health professionals, social workers, journalists and more – gone.”
Other states’ governors paused “medically elective” procedures, which includes some heart and transplant surgeries, to preserve scarce personal protective equipment (PPE) for critical care health professionals and minimized travel to limit virus transmission. But Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly chose
to give preferential treatment to the abortion industry by using a recent state court ruling that cleared a path for unlimited abortion as an excuse to declare elective abortions an “essential need,” further adding to her record as an abortion extremist.
“It is crystal clear that, worldwide, governments considered it necessary to delay or cancel millions of medical procedures to minimize the spread of COVID-19,” said Underwood, “yet Gov. Kelly turned our state into an elective abortion magnet. That magnet will become even stronger once the abortion industry sues all of our regulations and forces Kansas taxpayers to pay for abortions right up to the moment of birth. This is exactly why we must pass the VALUE THEM BOTH Amendment in August 2022.”
The VALUE THEM BOTH Amendment to the Kansas Constitution will appear on the August 2, 2022 ballot, and when passed, will protect previously enacted, bipartisan-supported regulations on the abortion industry. Without it, Kansas will become the destination for extreme abortion.