Former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius speaks with reporters during a Planned Parenthood conference in Kansas City, Mo.

Kansas City, Mo. ? Former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius decried what she called an environment of “terror” surrounding abortion clinics, and she told abortion rights advocates to be prepared for bills to be introduced in the coming legislative sessions in Kansas and Missouri.

“We just saw murders occurring in Colorado Springs, inside a Planned Parenthood facility,” Sebelius said, referring to a Nov. 27 shooting that left three dead and many more injured. “I think that’s terror.”

Sebelius was the keynote speaker at a Planned Parenthood conference in Kansas City, Mo., marking that group’s 80th anniversary of providing services in the metropolitan area.

“I think it’s very debilitating, demeaning and often frightening for women trying to access health care services when people are shrieking at them and screaming at them every day,” she told reporters afterwards. “As well intentioned as those protesters may be, it makes a visit to a doctor’s office very difficult.”

Monday’s event had been scheduled to take place at the Kauffman Foundation Conference Center, but was moved to a hotel on the Country Club Plaza because of heightened security concerns in the wake of the Dec. 2 mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif.

Former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius speaks with reporters during a Planned Parenthood conference in Kansas City, Mo.

“They didn’t want to put anybody at risk,” said Laura McQuade, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. “I understand that we were not the only organization to be canceled or relocated.”

Sebelius, a Democrat, served as governor from 2003 until President Barack Obama named her secretary of Health and Human Services in 2009. During her tenure, she was a strong supporter of abortion rights and received campaign support from Planned Parenthood. She also vetoed several bills passed by the Legislature that would have put more restrictions on abortions.

Although abortion has long been a highly charged political issue, Sebelius said tensions have risen in the wake of recent allegations — vehemently denied by Planned Parenthood — that it profits from the sale of fetal tissue derived from abortions.

Planned Parenthood has said it only charged fees to recover the cost of shipping tissue to research facilities.

“There were three clinics in the country that had any sort of engagement around fetal tissue, and now Planned Parenthood has announced even those three clinics, there will no longer be any kind of reimbursement for expenses,” Sebelius said.

She noted, “The vast, vast majority of health services performed by Planned Parenthood have nothing to do with even abortion services. They have to do with women’s health screenings and cancer screenings and access to contraception.”

But Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, a major anti-abortion lobbying group, disagreed that abortion protesters are creating a violent climate around clinics.

“I don’t think it’s any different than it’s ever been, except that there’s more peaceful, prayerful protesters and sidewalk counselors than there used to be,” she said. “There are a lot more people involved on a regular basis, peacefully protesting and/or trying to give out information about alternatives to abortion.”

She noted there are about 70 sites in Kansas that offer alternatives to abortion, saying: “People outside abortion clinics are often out there to hand out information about that.”

Since taking office, current Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, has signed a number of bills restricting access to abortion.

In 2011 he signed a bill that effectively cut off federal funding that flows through the state to Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas by giving preference to those funds to local health clinics, a law that led to the closing of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Hays.

And this year, he signed a first-in-the-nation law banning a procedure commonly used in second-trimester abortions known as “dilation and evacuation,” or D&E, a procedure that abortion opponents call “dismemberment abortion.”

That law is now being challenged before the Kansas Court of Appeals, and a decision is expected within the next several weeks.

Sebelius declined to comment on that law, or the ongoing legal challenge, but she predicted there will be more anti-abortion legislation in state capitals next year.

“There are battles going on across this country, trying to restrict access of women to reproductive health services, and because the president has been willing to stop regressive measures at the national level, state legislatures have become the battlefront,” she said. “Missouri and Kansas are at the heart of that. Both are states that have not yet expanded Medicaid, which hurts a lot of low-income women who would have access to health services.”

Culp declined to comment on what legislation Kansans for Life will push in 2016, but she predicted more states will follow Kansas’ lead in banning D&E procedures.

“Hopefully that will catch on across the country,” she said.