“The more data we have about why a woman chooses abortion will allow policymakers and social service agencies to help women to make an authentic choice for life if that’s what she chooses to do,” Weber said.
The abortion coercion bill “could further hurt or retraumatize survivors,” Wales said.
But Weber said the bill is meant to determine if women seeking an abortion are victims of sex trafficking or other kinds of coercion.
One of the abortion bills allows donors to crisis pregnancy centers a tax credit of 70% of what they give, with a total statewide cap of $10 million. It also gives a sales tax exemption for crisis pregnancy centers.
“They’re the front line,” Lucrecia Nold, policy specialist of the Kansas Catholic Conference, said of crisis pregnancy centers. “So let’s give them all of the resources that are available so that we can help these women.”
The bill also encourages adoption by offering a state adoption tax credit that matches the already-existing federal adoption tax credit and by allowing would-be adoptive parents to create an adoption savings account.
An effort to override the governor’s veto of a bill that would have banned gender transitioning for minors failed by two votes when two Republican state legislators flipped at the last minute.
Opponents of the bill argue that parents and children should decide whether a child who identifies with a gender other than the one that corresponds to the child’s sex should seek to transition.
But supporters say children should be protected from such transitioning, which they argue is harmful and may have permanent consequences.
Weber said supporters of the gender-transitioning ban will try again next legislative session.
“We’re going to continue to try to protect the children of Kansas from these life-changing, life-destructive practices that are both surgical and chemical,” Weber said.