Kansas judge blocks 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions

The temporary injunction also puts state-mandated counseling and a new abortion pill 'reversal' law on hold.
A Kansas judge has temporarily blocked several of the state’s longstanding abortion restrictions, including a 24-hour waiting period that providers say has resulted in hundreds of women being denied abortions.

In an order released Monday, Johnson County District Judge K. Christopher Jayaram wrote that the restrictions “[appear] to be a thinly-veiled effort to stigmatize the procedure and instill fear in patients that are contemplating an abortion, based upon disproven and unsupportable claims.”

The newly-blocked restrictions also include state-mandated counseling that contains the disproven claim that abortion increases the risk of developing breast cancer; a 30-minute waiting period after meeting with a doctor, and a new law that required providers to give patients medically unsupported information about reversing the effects of abortion pills.