PITTSBURG, Kan. — With the primary election scheduled for Tuesday, activists campaigning both for and against the Value Them Both Amendment were busy this weekend with last-minute organizing efforts ahead of election day.
Jeff Colyer, former Republican Kansas governor, was in Pittsburg Saturday morning, where he spoke to a small group of Value Them Both supporters at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church's Guadalupe Hall, echoing familiar themes of an election campaign in which both sides have repeatedly accused each other of lying.
“We’re seeing a big push this past week for another big lie,” said Colyer. This time, he said, the lie is that the Value Them Both Amendment would prevent doctors from performing procedures to treat ectopic or tubal pregnancies, as they would be considered abortion.
“A tubal pregnancy is where you have a fertilized egg and it gets caught in the fallopian tube and doesn’t go into the uterus, and so it’s in this little tiny straw and as that baby would grow there, it would rupture and kill the mother. And these do happen, and it’s a surgical problem, and it’s not a survivable pregnancy,” Colyer said. “And so they’re trying to say ‘Oh no, this would prevent doctors from taking care of an ectopic pregnancy.’ That’s not banned in any country in the world.”
Some, however, are not convinced that the Kansas Legislature, if empowered to further regulate abortion by passage of the Value Them Both Amendment, would do so in a way that would actually protect mothers’ lives in circumstances where they would be threatened by pregnancy complications.
Later on Saturday, “Vote No” campaigners had an event of their own at Pritchett Pavilion, which included a rally as well as a candlelight vigil in memory of those who have died from unsafe abortions in cases when legal and regulated abortions have not been available.
“We are going to stand in remembrance of those who have died, but we’re also going to stand in remembrance of those who will die, because it’s already starting,” said Jennifer Katzer, one of the organizers of the event. “I know a woman had an ectopic pregnancy the day that Roe was overturned, and she sat there bleeding for hours and hours as the medical team consulted their lawyers. She did make it, but she may not have.”
Chelsi Curtis, another organizer of the rally and candlelight vigil, highlighted several cases where women died as a result of unsafe abortions, which were detailed on posters on display during the vigil. One was a woman who had attempted to perform her own abortion.
“She had five kids, and she was living with her parents, and she got pregnant,” Curtis said. “And she thought to herself ‘I already have five kids, and I can’t have another one.’ So she did her own abortion with a knitting needle. She performed that abortion, she felt sick, she went to her doctor. When the doctor found out what she had done, they didn’t send her to the hospital for weeks, and she died of infection because that doctor made a call to not take her to the hospital for the infection.”
The Value Them Both Amendment, if approved, does not by itself ban abortion, but would allow the Kansas Legislature to further regulate it, potentially including a total or near-total ban. Legislators supportive of the amendment campaigned to get it on the ballot in response to a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court ruling that abortion is a right protected by the Kansas Constitution.
The proposed amendment states:
“Because Kansans value both women and children, the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion. To the extent permitted by the constitution of the United States, the people, through their elected state representatives and state senators, may pass laws regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, laws that account for circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or circumstances of necessity to save the life of the mother.”
It is not entirely clear what new regulations or restrictions on abortion, or exceptions in the case of rape or incest or to save a mother’s life, the legislature may end up approving if the amendment passes.
“The legislature is going to have to work through this, and this really allows us as Kansans to make decisions over a long period of time,” Colyer said Saturday. “You know, this is something where the legislature can listen to people and bring their consensus, and help, you know, figure out, OK, what are the nuances, where do we draw the lines on things? And that’s why I think you’ll just see a very robust discussion, and probably the more common-sense sorts of things that most people have a lot of agreement on.”
