The court sided in a 6-1 majority with the plaintiffs in the case, two physicians who performed the procedure, in a sweeping ruling that opens the door for abortion-rights activists to challenge a series of other restrictions that the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature has enacted.
At the heart of the Kansas decision is a 2015 law that would ban so-called dilation and evacuation procedures, a common method of abortion in the second trimester in which a physician uses surgical instruments and other equipment to take the fetus out of the womb.
Kansas was the first state to pass such a law in 2015, said Elizabeth Nash, an abortion legislation expert at the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. At least 11 other states have enacted similar bans.
Kansas is not the only state to have its law challenged. In Alabama, a similar law was blocked in several decisions, including the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The state has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A trial court had temporarily blocked the law in Kansas, finding the state constitution protected a right to abortion and, citing U.S. Supreme Court case law, that the ban would present an undue burden to women seeking one. After the state appeals court issued a split ruling, the question went before the Kansas Supreme Court.
The judges in Kansas blocked the law on the basis of the state constitution’s Bill of Rights, ruling that it “affords protection of the right of personal autonomy, which includes the ability to control one’s own body.” This extends, they ruled, to the decision of whether or not have an abortion.
Nash said the ruling could cause a backlash in Kansas, a conservative state where abortion rights have dwindled in recent years. One possible result, she said, could be an effort by the anti-abortion movement to amend the state constitution so it no longer allows for such a defense. That has already happened in three states: Alabama, Tennessee and West Virginia.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.