Newsbreak

Women sue Kansas due to pregnancy rules in advance directive law

By Nancy Flanders | June 5, 2025 , 12:43pm

Three women and two doctors are suing Kansas over a law that puts pregnant women’s advance medical directives on hold during pregnancy.

The Kansas Natural Death Act allows a person to state his or her wish to have life-sustaining procedures withheld or withdrawn in the event that they develop a “terminal condition” and can no longer make their own health care decisions. However, this advance directive is suspended if a woman is pregnant.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

Women and doctors in Kansas have filed a lawsuit claiming that the state’s advance medical directive pregnancy exclusion provision violates their rights under the state constitution.
The case is making headlines after the media shared the story of a Georgia woman who is currently pregnant and on life support, inaccurately claiming that her family wanted her life support removed and that the state’s pro-life law was preventing it.
Most states have a pregnancy exclusion in their decades-old advance medical directives laws with varying stipulations. The Kansas Natural Death Act has been in place since 1979.
In 2018, four Idaho women successfully sued to have the pregnancy exclusion removed from the state’s advance medical directive law.

THE DETAILS:

The Kansas lawsuit argues that postponing a person’s advance directives from being carried out during pregnancy violates their rights to personal autonomy and equal protection under the Kansas Constitution.

According to the Washington Post, every state has such a law, and most limit the choices surrounding a person’s decision to refuse care when pregnant and unable to speak for themselves. Some states limit those choices only if the baby is considered old enough to survive outside the womb or if there is a likely possibility of a live birth if the pregnancy is allowed to continue.

According to Compassion and Choices, more than 30 states have advance directive laws that contain a pregnancy exclusion. Nine states, including Kansas, do not allow life support to be removed at any point in pregnancy, while others allow it only if the child is not considered viable.

These laws have been in place for decades, but after the media shared the story of a Georgia woman being kept on life support because she was pregnant — and incorrectly reported that it was because of Georgia’s law protecting preborn children from direct killing via abortion — abortion supporters have been up in arms.

READ: FACT CHECK: Is a pro-life law forcing a brain dead pregnant woman to stay on life support?

While most laws have gone uncontested, in 2018, four women represented by Compassion & Choices brought a similar lawsuit against Idaho, challenging the state’s pregnancy exclusion in its advance medical directives law. A federal judge ruled in Almerico v. Idaho in 2021 that the exclusion was unconstitutional and violated women’s First, Fifth, and 14th Amendment rights.

In January 2022, after the state appealed that decision to the Ninth Circuit, it ultimately settled. The settlement required Idaho state officials to create a new advance directive template without the pregnancy exclusion and notify the 40,000 people who already had advance directives in place.

THE CONTEXT:

One of the women bringing the Kansas lawsuit, Emma Vernon, is pregnant, but all the plaintiffs argue that preventing a person’s advance medical directive from being acted upon if that person is pregnant violates their rights. They claim the state’s pregnancy exclusion negates the “deeply personal” health-care decisions they have made for themselves if they should be diagnosed with a terminal condition while pregnant.

According to the lawsuit, Vernon only wants life-sustaining treatment implemented if “there is a reasonable medical certainty” that her child would reach full term and be born “with a meaningful prospect of sustained life” without health conditions that would “impair its quality of life.”

“I am no less capable of planning my medical care simply because I am pregnant,” Vernon said in a statement Thursday. “I know what is best for me.”

The physician plaintiffs, meanwhile, claim the law’s lack of clarity has made them uncertain of what treatment they can provide. It seems that, somehow, though the Kansas advance medical directive law has been in place for about 50 years, these doctors suddenly find it difficult to understand.

The lawsuit also asks the court to prevent the Kansas Attorney General’s Office and the State Board of Healing Arts — which oversees health-care professionals — from enforcing the pregnancy exclusion portion of the advance directives law.

Attorneys from Compassion & Choices are representing the women and doctors, along with a Kansas law firm led by Pedro L. Irigonegaray, who served as the attorney for Kansas late-term abortionist George Tiller, who was murdered in 2009.