Kansas House passes bill mandating 12-point type on abortion information

? The Kansas House gave its final approval Thursday to a bill that specifies the size, color and type of font that must be used in giving women written information before an abortion procedure can be performed.

The bill, which now goes to the Senate for a final vote, makes changes to the Kansas Women’s Right to Know Act, which mandates that women be provided certain information about abortion, including alternatives to abortion, before a procedure can be performed.

Anti-abortion activists, however, argued that clinics were getting around that law by simply posting that information on their websites.

The new bill would expand the amount of information that must be provided to patients, and mandates that it be printed on white paper, with black ink in 12-point Times New Roman font.

Abortion rights advocates argued that the bill offers no new protections to women and that it will almost certainly be challenged in court, resulting in unnecessary legal expenses for the state.

The bill passed the House Thursday, 84-38.

The House passed an earlier version of the written notification bill on March 30 and sent it to the Senate where another version of the bill was pending. But that bill never came out of committee, and the full Senate has not considered it yet.

Nevertheless, the latest version came out of a conference committee made up of leaders of the House and Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee.

Under joint rules of the Legislature, it is not necessary for both chambers to consider a bill before it can be considered in a conference committee. Bills that come out of conference committees are not subject to amendment and can only be voted up or down.

The conference committee used a procedure known as “gut-and-go” to put the contents of the House bill into a Senate bill that originally dealt with regulation of propane.

Kansas is currently defending another abortion lawsuit before the Kansas Supreme Court that challenges a 2015 law that bans a certain abortion procedure.

The state is also defending two other lawsuits pending in Shawnee County District Court: one challenging a 2011 law imposing numerous regulations on abortion clinics, and another challenging a 2013 law that prohibits abortions in certain circumstances while declaring that life begins at conception.