Kansas leaders use annual rally to cast courts as major hurdle in anti-abortion fight
Margot Scobee and Kathleen Timmermeyer, Wichita residents, join the annual March for Life rally on Jan. 28, 2025, in Topeka, Kansas. (Photo by Anna Kaminski/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — More than 19,000 naked baby models at varying stages of fetal development were splayed on tables Wednesday in the heart of the Kansas Statehouse.
They were meant to visually contextualize the number of abortions performed in Kansas in 2024. They were the work of Kansans for Life to commemorate its annual March for Life demonstration, which served to lift up pregnancy resource centers, condemn Kansas courts and gather Kansans from across the state who share a motivation to abolish abortion.
Hundreds of attendees walked from the Topeka Performing Arts Center, which hosted Catholic speeches and a mass Wednesday morning, to the Statehouse, where the organization held an anti-abortion rally on the building’s south steps.
The rally’s speakers took aim at a modern “culture of death,” in the words of Senate President Ty Masterson, and blamed courts for abortion being allowed in Kansas, as Attorney General Kris Kobach said.
“Kansas has really become, unfortunately, the abortion capital of the Midwest,” Kobach said. “So how did we get there?”
He asked the crowd whether “the legislators here caused the problem.” Members of the crowd shouted “no.”
He asked if Congress caused the problem. Again, the crowd said “no.”
“How about the Kansas courts? Did they start that problem?” he asked.
Some in the crowd gave a smattering of unsure “no” and “yes” responses.
Then Kobach pointed across the street at the Kansas Supreme Court building.
“As you may know, a few years ago, the court invented an invisible right to abortion in the Kansas Constitution,” he said.
In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court decided the Kansas Constitution’s right to bodily autonomy includes terminating a pregnancy. A few years later, almost 60% of Kansas voters who participated in the August 2022 primary election rejected an anti-abortion ballot measure. The Supreme Court in 2024 affirmed its earlier decision and struck down a state law that banned the most common second-trimester abortion procedure.
Kobach said the Kansas Supreme Court “twisted the meaning” of the state constitution, creating an uphill fight to defend anti-abortion laws in court.
He also pointed to a recent case from an abortion provider against him in Johnson County, which hasn’t yet been decided. The case will determine whether mandates such as waiting periods, state-approved signs and fetal pain information are allowed under state law.
Anti-abortion policy goals
Kansans for Life also released its 2026 legislative priorities Wednesday.
“The focus is on continuing support for organizations that offer life-affirming options for pregnant women, strengthening informed consent protections for women, and protecting taxpayers from being compelled to subsidize the abortion industry,” said Jeanne Gawdun, the organization’s director of government relations.
The organization wants lawmakers to continue to fund a $3 million program that gives money to pregnancy resource centers across the state. It also wants legislators to add protections for those centers, which are typically religiously affiliated nonprofits that often are not staffed by medical professionals and serve to dissuade people from having abortions.
As of 2023, Kansas has 44 pregnancy resource centers, also called crisis pregnancy centers, according to the Crisis Pregnancy Center Map, which consists of data compiled by health researchers from the University of Georgia. Kansas has offered funding for the centers since legislation passed in 2024. It also offers to centers’ donors a tax break, deducting up to 70% of a donation under the Pregnancy Resource Tax Act, which was passed in 2024.
Gawdun said bills are in the works to remove Medicaid reimbursement eligibility from abortion providers and modify the Women’s Right to Know Act to modify the definition of informed consent. The act is one of the pieces of the pending lawsuit against Kobach in Johnson County.
A dozen Republican legislators and state Treasurer Steven Johnson attended the rally. It was the second day of anti-abortion demonstrations at the Statehouse.
Margot Scobee, a Wichita resident who tries to attend the march in Topeka every year, and Kathleen Timmermeyer, also of Wichita, attended the rally because of their desire to see an end to abortion.
“It’s gone on too long,” Scobee said.
The two have marched in Washington, D.C., where an annual rally has taken place since the first anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 1974 — Scobee in 2014 and Timmermeyer in 1986.
Protesting abortion is part of their lives, and it has always held meaning, they said.
“It’s not a fly-by-night thing,” Timmermeyer said.
Paul Rhodes of Hutchinson is similarly immersed in the anti-abortion movement. He said he tries to balance two scriptures when considering both sides of the abortion issue. One asks people, “be fruitful and multiply,” and the other asks people to “not stand in the way of sinners.”
“Here’s what I really believe,” Rhodes said. “America is on the cusp of a civil war, and it’s going to be over abortion.”
This story has been updated.