Women are suffering. KY must change abortion laws so they get the health care they need | Opinion
In the two years since the Dobbs decision overturned the right to an abortion, something has become very clear:
In such states as Texas and Georgia that, like Kentucky, have adopted abortion bans with limited exceptions, women have died because because they can’t get access to the care they need when they miscarry or have fatal fetal anomalies.
What’s more, the political right has made it very clear that dead women are acceptable collateral damage in their fanatical quest to ban abortion no matter what.
A woman should not die of sepsis because a doctor is too scared to remove a miscarried fetus. A woman should not bleed out because a hospital’s lawyers won’t allow her to be treated when something goes wrong with a pregnancy.
Even in states that explicitly allow medical care in the case of a dangerous ectopic pregnancy, in which the fertilized egg implants in a Fallopian tube, emergency rooms have turned away patients because they are scared they will face criminal charges.
In Kentucky, we’ve been lucky so far. We don’t yet know of a fatal result of the state’s abortion laws. But when it meets again next month, the General Assembly has the chance to do better.
Lawmakers need to stop ignoring the unintended consequences of their laws, the chilling effects that are stopping doctors from giving appropriate medical care. The General Assembly should remove the harsh criminal penalties held over doctors’ heads that make them afraid to give women appropriate health care.
Lawmakers should also add two sets of exceptions. One for rape and incest, and another that lays out in much greater detail what doctors are allowed to do to provide appropriate health care and save women’s lives.
“Our legislature needs to understand that the barriers and the fear they’ve instilled is unacceptable,” said Tamarra Wieder, the Kentucky State Director of Planned Parenthood. “They need to determine a path forward for doctors ... there needs to be some pathway to care.”
Even when women’s lives are not at risk, they deserve appropriate care
Just read Alex Acquisto’s compelling story of Genevieve Postlethwait, a Paducah woman whose water broke 17 weeks into a much-wanted pregnancy. Although she was at risk of serious infection, she was forced to drive to Illinois to get the care she needed.
“Doctors interviewed for this story said Kentucky lawmakers are fundamentally mistaken in thinking the ban’s “life of the mother” exceptions, as they’re often referred to, are broad enough to care for the full gamut of complications that require a pregnancy to be ended early,” Acquisto writes.
“This reality, the lack of wiggle room for it in the law and the threat of a felony charge hanging over a doctor’s head if the law is violated, is pressuring doctors against providing necessary care, which continues to put patients at unnecessary risk, they said.”
On Thursday, freshman Rep. Adam Moore, D-Lexington said in response to Acquisto’s story, he will be filing legislation that would address options for mothers facing nonviable pregnancies. Other legislators, including Republicans, have other exceptions bills moving forward, according to Acquisto.
The GOP supermajority should consider allowing them to move forward for discussion and possible passage.
Fetal anomalies
Other states have made their laws less vague by adopting specific exceptions.
In Louisiana, for example, the state has a list of 19 specific conditions that can be exceptions to the state’s abortion ban, including trisomy 13, anencephaly, and hydrops fetalis.
The 20th is a broader diagnosis: “A profound and irremediable congenital or chromosomal anomaly existing in the unborn child that is incompatible with sustaining life after birth in reasonable medical judgment as certified by two physicians that are licensed to practice in the State of Louisiana.”
The law requires two physicians to agree on the diagnosis and be in agreement on how to move forward.
The problem is for women in Louisiana’s rural areas, where doctors are in short supply, much less specialist OB-GYNs, said Michelle Erenberg is the executive director of Lift Louisiana, a reproductive rights non-profit.
Louisiana does not have exceptions for rape and incest.
The list has not helped much on care for women who lose a baby to an unexplained miscarriage, rather than one of the fatal anomalies on the list.
“The biggest challenge is over when to be able to intervene on a miscarriage, or some other pregnancy complication,” she said.
It’s hard to work to improve abortion bans when reproductive rights activists want to remove the bans altogether. “No one wants to make the bills better, they just want to get rid of them,” Erenburg said.
That sentiment is echoed by Wieder.
“Even when you have exemptions, it doesn’t mean you have access to care you need,” Wieder said. “That is the unfortunate truth — providers are afraid of liability, hospitals are afraid that providers will go to jail.”
She’s right. Kentucky should remove the criminal penalties that hang over doctors so neither they, nor the lawyers that work at the hospitals they serve, are scared to provide the right care. Lawmakers are not doctors, and they do not know how to treat patients.
But Kentucky should also add a list of fatal fetal anomalies as exceptions because it might let even one woman get the care she needs.
Kentucky is ruled by an extremist supermajority; the state is not losing its abortion ban any time soon. Still, we should not let perfect be the enemy of good. These terrible laws could become slightly less terrible.
It might just save someone’s life.
This story was originally published January 16, 2025 at 11:57 AM.
