The Kansas Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Thursday morning in the most important pro-life issue ever to be decided in state history: whether a previously unknown “fundamental” right to abortion is part of the 1859 state Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

This momentous case began in June of 2015, when abortion interests sued SB 95, the newly-enacted Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act. This first-in-the nation ban—which other states have enacted and others are now seeking to pass—would prohibit the barbaric method of tearing apart fully-formed unborn children, piece by piece, while they are still alive inside their mother.

Shawnee District Court Judge Larry Hendricks issued a temporary injunction against the measure. He concluded that abortion interests would eventually prevail when a state right to abortion was officially acknowledged. A split decision of the Kansas Court of Appeals on the matter last January left Hendricks’ injunction in place.

The legal team for the Kansas Attorney General, Derek Schmidt, has rigorously defended SB 95 as an authentic exercise of the state’s regulatory powers. They have repeatedly argued that any idea that Kansas actually has enshrined a right to abortion “is a fantasy.”

KFL FRIEND OF THE COURT BRIEF

As it had for the first appeal of SB 95, Kansans for Life filed an “amicus curiae” (friend of the court) brief, buttressing the arguments of the Attorney General.

The KFL amicus asks that the Kansas Supreme Court reverse the injunction issued by Judge Hendricks and “declare that no right to abortion can be implied or created based on the text, history, and jurisprudence of this state.” The amicus points out:

The Hendricks’ ruling is in direct conflict with the primacy of place given to the right to life in the Kansas Bill of Rights, which declares, “All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The litigation against SB 95 thus far has treated the case as if no application of the ban is constitutional (called a facial challenge) when in fact, the abortionists challenging the ban have presented documentation that undermines that claim. The same logic that upheld the federal partial-birth abortion ban (in the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court’s Gonzales ruling) will also uphold a ban on the equally horrific shredding of still-alive unborn children. Senate Bill 95 is based on the simple proposition that causing gratuitous pain to other human beings is fundamentally wrong— the foundation of the Kansas statutory prohibition of torture and enhanced penalties for crimes involving torture.

In its conclusion, the KFL brief advises the Kansas Supreme Court that:

“There simply is no basis in the Kansas Bill of Rights for a ruling that requires the state to tolerate live dismemberment abortion – a ruling that affords unborn children less protection than afforded by state statute to the livestock in this state.”

Many pro-lifers are praying that the justices will be positively affected in this hearing tomorrow. The hearing will be live streamed here.