A Planned Parenthood branch in Kansas said Thursday that has been licensed under the state’s new law regarding abortion clinics, meaning it will be the only abortion clinic that will remain open Friday once the new law takes effect.
The license came through after Planned Parenthood announced a lawsuit against the law on Thursday. “We have been targeted in this bill and Kansas women are the ones who will suffer if their health care is taken away,” Peter Brownlie, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, said in a statement. “This is radical, extreme government intrusion into private health care.”
“Notwithstanding that the regulations are burdensome and unnecessary,” Brownlie said in a statement on the license, “the findings of the inspection indicate what we have known and said throughout this process: Planned Parenthood operates with the highest standards of patient care and has rigorous safety procedures in place.”
The new law requires abortion clinics to get inspected and licensed by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment before they can perform abortions. The KDHE has very recently implemented a series of strict new regulations — which two abortion doctors say they only saw ten days before Friday, the day the law is scheduled to go into effect.
Those two doctors, Herbert Hodes and Traci Lynn Hauser, filed Tuesday for a temporary injunction against the law, arguing that the new regulations are excessively strict and have “made it impossible for existing medical practices to obtain a license by the effective date.” A hearing for the lawsuit is scheduled Friday.
Planned Parenthood filed its own suit Thursday, though Brownlie stipulated that state surveyors were scheduled to return to the facilities for an inspection. KDHE officials later confirmed they had granted one license.
Other than Planned Parenthood and Hodes and Hauser, there is just one other clinic in the state that provides abortions. Neither Hodes and Hauser nor the other clinic have been licensed yet, and both are expected to be shut down Friday unless the courts intervene.
