Kansas has new abortion laws while Louisiana may block exceptions to its ban

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas is requiring abortion providers to share patient information with the state and increasing funds to anti-abortion centers, while in Louisiana bills to loosen its restrictive ban face an uphill battle, thanks to Republican supermajorities in their Legislatures.

Democratic lawmakers in Louisiana are pushing bills to add exceptions, including in cases of rape and incest, to the state’s near-total abortion ban. A GOP-dominated House committee began its review of those measures Tuesday, but similar proposals failed last year.

Meanwhile in Kansas, the GOP-controlled Legislature on Monday overrode all four of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's vetoes of measures sought by anti-abortion groups. Starting July 1, abortion providers must ask patients why they are terminating their pregnancies and report the answers to the state, and it will be a specific crime to coerce someone into having an abortion.

Kansas also will offer both direct aid to anti-abortion centers and tax breaks for them and their donors. The aim of anti-abortion centers is to dissuade people from getting abortions while offering supplies, classes and other services.

Anti-abortion groups still exert a strong influence over Republicans in statehouses across the U.S. That's even after votes on ballot initiatives in multiple states demonstrated public support for abortion rights following the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision in 2022 — with the first one in Kansas in August 2022.

“We did not put this to bed,” Kansas Senate Democratic Leader Dinah Sykes said Tuesday. “Those people who showed up to vote who had not voted before need to show up in November to vote.”

The two states, nearly 400 miles (700 kilometers) apart, have dramatically different abortion laws because of their top courts. In August 2022, just months after Dobbs, Louisiana Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to that state's near-total abortion ban, allowing the prohibition to go into effect. That was 10 days after Kansas voters decisively affirmed the position in a 2019 state Supreme Court ruling that the state constitution protects abortion rights.

Kansas doesn't ban most abortions until the 22nd week of pregnancy. Kelly is a strong supporter of abortion rights and has consistently vetoed the GOP-controlled Legislature's abortion measures.

She is expected to veto a fifth measure sought by abortion opponents, a bill aimed at ensuring that judges order child support payments apply to fetuses so that the mother's pregnancy expenses are covered. It would be similar to a Georgia law.

Critics believe the Kansas child support measure advances the anti-abortion movement’s long-standing goal of giving embryos and fetuses legal and constitutional protections on par with those of the people carrying them. There are dozens of proposals in at least 15 states aimed at promoting fetal rights, though most have not advanced, according to an Associated Press analysis earlier this year using the bill-tracking software Plural.

“If we’re going to say that fetuses now have legal rights, that is going to affect downstream a whole bunch of other things,” state Sen. Ethan Corson, a Kansas City-area Democrat, said before the measure passed last week.

But Kansas has had a law in place since 2007 that allows people to face separate charges for what it considers crimes against fetuses, and a 2013 state law declares that “unborn children have interests in life, health and well-being," though it isn't enforced as a limit on abortion.

The child support bill wouldn't change state policy on the legal status of fetuses, said Kansas Senate Judiciary Chair Kellie Warren, a Kansas City-area Republican.

“The real impact of this bill is helping women,” she said.

Abortion opponents also have touted the other measures as helping pregnant women and girls, in part by gathering better data about abortion so lawmakers can set clearer policy.

One measure continues to give $2 million a year in direct aid to anti-abortion centers that provide free supplies and services. Another exempts them from paying the state's 6.5% sales tax on what they buy and gives their donors a state income tax credit.

Kansans for Life, the state's most influential anti-abortion group said in a statement Monday that the measures “seek to meet Kansans where they are and save as many lives as possible.”

Meanwhile, many Republicans reject the argument that the August 2022 vote means Kansas voters expect lawmakers to stop regulating abortion.

“I think most Kansans would agree that we did want certain safeguards,” said GOP state Sen. Renee Erickson, of Wichita.

Louisiana's only exceptions to its abortion ban are when there is substantial risk of death or impairment to the patient in continuing a pregnancy and when the fetus has a fatal abnormality that makes a pregnancy “medically futile.”

Earlier this year, lawmakers rejected an effort to let voters decide whether abortions should be legal in Louisiana. The legislation proposed an amendment to Louisiana’s Constitution to enshrine reproductive rights for women, including access to birth control, abortion and infertility treatments.

Public opinion polls nationwide and some in Louisiana as reported by the The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate, have found that the majority oppose the most restrictive bans.

During the Louisiana House committee's first review Tuesday of bills adding new exceptions, Democrats shed tears and raised their voices in pleading for exceptions to the current law for rape and incest.

Democratic state Rep. Alonzo Knox, of New Orleans, questioned why young girls “who have been violated in the most unfathomable way” should be forced to give birth and be repeatedly traumatized by the experience.

“Not only that, she gives birth to a child that she has no knowledge or education about how to care for,” he added.

The committee expects to take a vote next week. Sponsoring state Rep. Delisha Boyd, another New Orleans Democrat, said she will try to sit down with Republican lawmakers and GOP Gov. Jeff Landry to see whether she can amend the bill to increase its chances of passage.

Landry, elected last year, replaced term-limited Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, who supported some abortion restrictions but was a vocal backer of some exceptions.

Cline reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

FILE - Abortion-rights supporters protest on the steps of the John Minor Wisdom United States of Appeals Fifth Circuit Building after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, in New Orleans, Friday, June 24, 2022. Democratic lawmakers in Louisiana are pushing bills to add exceptions, including in cases of rape and incest, to the state’s near-total abortion ban. A GOP-dominated House committee began its review of those measures Tuesday, April 30, 2024, but similar proposals for loosening one of the country’s strictest abortion laws effectively died there last year. (Sophia Germer/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP, File)

FILE - Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry addresses members of the House and Senate on opening day of a legislative special session focusing on crime, Feb. 19, 2024, in the House Chamber at the State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La. Democratic lawmakers in Louisiana are pushing bills to add exceptions to abortion bans, including in cases of rape and incest, to the state’s near-total abortion ban. A GOP-dominated House committee began its review of those measures Tuesday, April 30, 2024, but similar proposals for loosening one of the country’s strictest abortion laws effectively died there last year. (Hilary Scheinuk/The Advocate via AP, File)

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — An independent commission investigating the deadliest shooting in Maine history plans to explore allegations that police officers arriving without orders created “chaos” during the search for the gunman.

Chairman Daniel Wathen said commissioners intend to address some of the “disturbing allegations” in a report by the Portland Police Department special reaction team. But he said others may be outside the panel’s scope, including an allegation that deputies in an armored vehicle had been drinking before nearly crashing into another armored vehicle.

The panel reconvenes Friday to hear from witnesses on communications and coordination problems.

The Cumberland County tactical vehicle could have claimed lives if it had crashed into the Portland police vehicle, the report said, while noting that self-dispatching officers created the potential for more harm than good.

“I have never seen the amount of self dispatching, federal involvement with plain clothes and utter chaos with self dispatching in my career,” the tactical team leader, Nicholas Goodman, wrote in the partially redacted report, which The Associated Press obtained Tuesday through the state's Freedom of Access Act.

The Cumberland County sheriff refuted accusations that any of his deputies were intoxicated after the report indicated the armored vehicle skidded to a halt to avoid a crash that could've been fatal.

Both the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office and Portland Police Department tactical teams were responding to a location where the shooter's vehicle was abandoned by the Androscoggin River on the evening of Oct. 25, after the gunman, an Army reservist, killed 18 people and wounded 13 others at a bowling alley and a bar and grill in Lewiston.

The commission previously heard testimony from law enforcement officials about the chaotic hours after the shooting in which agencies mobilized for a search and police officers poured into the region.

The Portland report was especially critical of self-dispatching officers. The report suggested officers who arrived to help in plain clothes — “similar clothing to the suspect” — created a dangerous situation in which police officers could’ve exchanged fire with each other in a wooded area near the gunman’s abandoned vehicle. The gunman's body was found two days later at a nearby location where he died by suicide.

Tactical vehicles used by the Cumberland Sheriff’s Office and Portland Police Department apparently weren’t aware of each other’s presence.

The Portland team, which arrived first near the site of the gunman's vehicle, was attempting to keep police cruisers off a bridge where lights were transforming officers into targets when an armored vehicle approached from the other side of the bridge and skidded to a stop within 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 meters) of the Portland vehicle, the report said.

In the report, Goodman wrote that the “smell of intoxicants” wafted from the tactical vehicle operated by Cumberland County tactical team members, who said they were assisting after attending a funeral.

Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce said in an earlier statement that any report of intoxicated officers should've been raised at the time — not six months after the tragedy — and he defended his deputies. He said in the statement that an internal investigation cleared the officers and that no one was determined to be intoxicated at the scene.

FILE - Crime scene tape still surrounds Schemengees Bar & Grille, Oct. 29, 2023, in Lewiston, Maine. An independent commission investigating the deadliest shooting in Maine history plans to take up accusations in a report that contended self-dispatching police officers created “chaos” during the search for the gunman, but may not address an allegation that deputies in an armored vehicle had been drinking before nearly crashing into another armored vehicle. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)