Abortion at forefront of KY governor’s race as Beshear again hits Cameron on exemptions
With fewer than 50 days remaining until Kentuckians head to the polls to pick their next governor, access to reproductive health care has emerged as a defining issue of this election.
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican challenger Attorney General Daniel Cameron both appeared as keynote speakers at the Kentucky Chamber’s Gubernatorial Forum in Louisville Wednesday evening. The on-stage discussion focused on business and economic topics, and not, as moderator Jacqueline Pitts said, “things that are heating up on the airwaves.”
Earlier Wednesday, Beshear’s re-election campaign released a scathing new commercial in which a young woman named Hadley shares her story of being raped by her stepfather as a child. Hadley calls Cameron out by name over his record of supporting Kentucky’s abortion ban as-is, which only allows exceptions to save the life of the pregnant person.
Pitts, senior vice president of communications and marketing for the Chamber, asked both candidates — who did not share the stage with one another — to say one nice thing about their opponent.
“I would have had a lot of nice things to say about him until he ran that ad against me today,” Cameron quipped, prompting some laughter and groans from the audience.
Cameron released a video statement Wednesday, calling Beshear’s ad a “disgusting, false” attack that’s a part of “the most despicable campaign in Kentucky history.”
Cameron’s positions on abortion and access to birth control have come under renewed scrutiny in the last week.
First, answers he gave on the Northern Kentucky Right to Life candidate survey during the primary resurfaced, leading many of his critics to conclude he was in favor of criminalizing birth control; Cameron said such claims are “ridiculous.” Then on Monday, Cameron pivoted from his long-standing record of supporting Kentucky’s abortion ban as-is, saying he’d sign a law that added exceptions for rape and incest.
Speaking to the Herald-Leader after the forum, Beshear said he believes most Kentuckians think that victims, like Hadley, “deserve options.”
“Listen, it is clear where Daniel Cameron is and where he’s been,” Beshear said. “But with seven weeks to go to an election, he finds himself down, and desperate people will say anything.”
Democrats have spent the last few days digging up multiple examples of the many times Cameron expressed support for the current abortion ban without exceptions, saying he’s “not going to waver in my position.”
“He has supported this law with no exceptions for rape and incest through its passage, through when it became active after Dobbs, through defending it in front of the Supreme Court, to multiple surveys for endorsements that he proudly talked about, to multiple times on a primary debate stage,” Beshear said. “Either polling has changed his core values, or he’ll say anything to win the race.”
A Thursday morning memo from Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates - Kentucky said Cameron’s “extremist anti-abortion views and repeated actions are against the will of the majority of Kentucky voters.”
Last November, Kentucky voters rejected a proposal to revise the state constitution to make clear there is no protected right to abortion, and similar anti-abortion efforts have also failed in states like Ohio and Kansas.
“When anti-abortion candidate Cameron loses in November, it will be a bellwether for races nationwide in 2024 as well,” the memo said.
Wednesday’s ad was not the first time the Beshear campaign pounced on Cameron’s track record on abortion. In early September, the campaign released an ad featuring a Louisville prosecutor who described her experience going after serious criminals before calling Cameron’s position on abortion unconscionable.
Beshear also drew contrast between his stance on birth control and Cameron’s; Cameron opposes using taxpayer dollars, including Medicaid, to pay for birth control.
“There are hundreds of thousands of Kentucky women on Medicaid. There are also thousands on our state health plan, where tax dollars go into,” Beshear said. “All of those people deserve access to contraception, if they choose it. This is a radical and extreme position that would rip contraception away from hundreds of thousands of Kentucky women.”
Beshear also noted Cameron’s NKRTL survey answers included support for repealing the Affordable Care Act. Cameron has since said he would keep Medicaid expansion while implementing work requirements for “able-bodied individuals.”
“You don’t get to check yes, and to sign your name, say you’ll work to repeal something and then say you didn’t mean it,” Beshear said. “We ought to believe him when he says what he’ll do.”
In response to Cameron’s claims that he supports abortion “through the ninth month,” Beshear said he’s always opposed late-term abortions.
“I have been clear and consistent since when I ran for attorney general that I believe in reasonable restrictions,” he said.
Even under Roe, elective abortion was never legal up to the moment of birth but viability. Late-term abortions, which are rare and typically take place in the third trimester, are provided largely in cases of severe medical emergencies. In 2020 in Kentucky, for example, only one abortion out of 4,104, total, was provided after 22 weeks gestation — well under the 40-week mark of a typical pregnancy.
