KY lawmakers advance second abortion bill. It would ban the procedure after 15 weeks.
Abortions would be banned after 15 weeks in Kentucky under a new Republican-backed bill that won approval from a Senate committee Thursday.
Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, said Senate Bill 321 is “closely modeled” after the Mississippi case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Mississippi law bans abortion if the “probable age of the unborn human” is more than 15 weeks. In arguing its case, the state has asked the high court to also overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that bars states from outlawing abortion before a fetus is viable, typically around 23 weeks. A decision is expected this summer.
Wise told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, “I’m bringing this bill to you so that in the event the Supreme Court upholds the Mississippi legislation as constitution, we will have a pro-life law in place not subject to a good-faith legal challenge.”
Other states have erected similar blockades to abortion access mirroring the Mississippi case, including Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign into law a ban on abortion after 15 weeks in the coming days. Abortion is currently illegal in Kentucky after 20 weeks, according to state law.
Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates was quick to rebuke the bill. Kentucky state Director Tamarra Wieder, referring to another 15-week ban bill Kentucky passed in 2018, said, “advancing another 15-week ban now, without waiting for the Supreme Court to issue a ruling on Mississippi’s ban this summer, or a ruling on our state’s existing 15-week ban, shows SB 321 is nothing more than political theater in an election year.”
Previously, Kentucky has passed laws banning abortion after six and 14 weeks, but both are wrapped up in legal challenges.
In addition to outlawing abortions after 15 weeks, Wise’s bill gives the state Attorney General the authority “to bring an action in law or equity to enforce” provisions of the bill. It also redefines certain phases of fetal development, beginning with redefining the “gestational age” that a fetus becomes a “pain-capable unborn child” from 20 weeks down to 15.
Exceptions to the 15-week ban include if the life of the pregnant person is at stake, “or to avoid a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman,” according to the bill language.
Republican-led states across the country are preemptively passing restrictive anti-abortion laws in anticipation that the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn Roe within the year. While Wise’s bill hinges on a Roe reversal, Kentucky is in other ways moving ahead as if the landmark law has already been struck down.
Over the past six years, Kentucky has not only adopted laws that would make abortion illegal (a 2019 “trigger law” bans abortion immediately if Roe is overturned), and revoke one’s constitutional right to the procedure (Kentuckians will vote on whether to do this in a statewide referendum later this year). But Republican lawmakers have buttressed those laws with a patchwork of other regulations to make the procedure as difficult as possible to access.
Senate Bill 321 is the second anti-abortion bill advancing through the Kentucky General Assembly this session. The heftier House Bill 3 from Rep. Nancy Tate, Brandenburg, is a sweepingly restrictive omnibus bill that opponents say will further regulate abortion to such an unsustainable degree, it’ll effectively end access to the procedure. Among other regulations, Tate’s bill would disallow the mailing of abortion pills, even after a telehealth consultation with a physician, and create a new arduous certification and monitoring program that the Board of Pharmacy says it simply lacks the staff and resources to manage. Tate’s bill was passed in the House and will be voted on again in legislative committee before it’s sent to the Senate.
Neither Wise nor Tate included testimony from Kentucky physicians when presenting their bills to lawmakers.
On Thursday, Wise was flanked by leaders of two of Kentucky’s most notable ideologically conservative groups, who’ve also spoken in support of House Bill 3. David Walls, executive director of Kentucky Right to Life, called the bill a “common sense and prudent pro-life law.” Kentucky Right to Life Association Executive Director Addia Wuchner said it was “another step forward in protecting those who do not have a voice for themselves, and that’s Kentucky’s unborn children.”
But Dr. Brittany Myers, a resident OB-GYN practicing in Louisville, said Wise’s bill was “oozing with non-medical terminology and misinformation regarding the safety and truth of procedures we can treat patients with.”
Dr. Myers is referring to a series of fetal characteristics Wise’s bill would codify into law, and its classification of abortion as a dangerous and “barbaric practice,” carrying “significant physical and psychological risks to the maternal patient.”
The majority of abortions performed after 15 weeks are “dilation and evacuation procedures, which involve the use of surgical instruments to crush and tear the unborn child apart before removing the pieces of the dead child from the womb,” the bill reads. “The General Assembly finds that the intentional commitment of such acts for non-therapeutic or elective reasons is a barbaric practice, dangerous for the maternal patient, and demeaning to the medical profession.”
Dr. Myers chided bill supporters for allowing the inclusion of “false information and inflammatory language that is focused on shaming and falsely informing the non-medical community.”
She questioned the arbitrariness of 15 weeks. “Why that gestational age? I highly doubt that anyone [is] actually be able to give me a medically substantial, evidence-based answer.”
Wise’s bill explains that at 15 weeks, the cut off, “an unborn child can open and close his or her fingers, starts to make sucking motions, senses stimulation from the world outside the womb, and has taken on ‘the human form.’”
Sen. Stephen West, R-Paris, asked Dr. Myers if she thinks abortion should be allowed after 24 weeks, once a fetus can live outside the womb.
Myers said she “should have the opportunity, with my medical expertise and experience, to individualize every patient’s care, depending on their medical history and specific situation.”
Her focus is the patient, she said, “And I think everything should be individualized, which is why blanket policies like this can never address every individual situation.”
Before committee members voted in favor of the bill, 8-2, Chairman Whitney Westerfield, R-Hopkinsville, said he knows women who seek abortions do so for different reasons. But many who do “struggle with guilt and shame,” he said. Referring to elective abortions, “I hate to see life cast aside for things not as valuable as life.”
The bill now heads to the Senate for floor votes.
This story was originally published March 10, 2022 at 2:14 PM.
