FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Republican lawmakers inserted several medical exceptions into Kentucky's near-total abortion ban on Thursday, seeking to offer clarity to doctors fearful of breaking the law for terminating pregnancies while treating expectant mothers with grave complications.
Delving into potential life-or-death situations, the bill provides clear guidelines for doctors in such emergencies while maintaining Kentucky's strict prohibitions against abortion, its GOP supporters said.
“It ensures women facing life-threatening situations receive timely, appropriate medical care, and gives providers the legal certainty they need to act decisively,” said Republican state Rep. Jason Nemes.
Some abortion-rights supporters said the bill reflected fundamental flaws in the abortion laws and had not been fully vetted. They noted it cleared a committee and both legislative chambers in less than 24 hours.
Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban has been in place since a so-called trigger law took effect when the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022. The Bluegrass State bans abortions except when carried out to save a mother’s life. Efforts to for cases of rape or incest or when pregnancies are nonviable have made no headway in Kentucky's Republican-supermajority legislature.
“We are in this mess ... because the current Kentucky state laws are so restrictive that we actually need clarity to save the life of a pregnant mother,” said Democratic state Rep. Rachel Roarx. “That’s where we’re at. And it is terrifying to be someone who can become pregnant in this state.”
With only a handful of days left in this year's 30-day legislative session, a Senate committee attached the abortion-related language to a bill dealing with birthing centers Wednesday night.
The bill cleared both the Senate and House on Thursday and now goes to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, an abortion-rights supporter who told reporters he had questions about its impact on one of the country's “the most restrictive, draconian abortion laws."
“Is it more or less restrictive than the current understanding in the medical community that we have right now?” said Beshear, who is seen as a potential contender for the White House in 2028.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to enforce abortion bans, exceptions have been a legal and political battleground.
The last year rejected a challenge by a group of women who said that the state’s law was too vague regarding what medically necessary exceptions are allowed. But this year, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the state should amend the ban to clarify that question.
last year sought to clear up confusion surrounding emergency exceptions by approving a taxpayer-funded video explaining the law to physicians. But some doctors said it didn’t help.
In Kentucky, abortion law has created barriers to treating women faced with complicated pregnancies, a doctor told the Senate panel Wednesday evening. The new legislation deals with the “most glaring barriers to care,” said Jeffrey Goldberg, a gynecologic oncologist from Louisville.
“We’re hopeful to get at least some initial changes ... that will remove the conflicts that physicians are facing between, on the one hand, trying to do what they know is right for their patient, based on what the medical evidence dictates, and at the same time their fear of being accused of a felony," he said.
The bill says doctors exercising reasonable medical judgment may take action “separating a pregnant woman from her unborn child” in such cases as: lifesaving miscarriage management; emergency intervention for sepsis and hemorrhaging; procedures necessary to prevent the death or substantial risk of death of the pregnant woman; removal of an ectopic pregnancy; treatment of a molar pregnancy.
“It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list but it is the most common issues that physicians and mothers, who are facing a crisis pregnancy, are facing,” said Republican state Rep. Kimberly Poore Moser.
Addia Wuchner, executive director of Kentucky Right to Life, was among the bill's advocates, telling the Senate panel: “This is medical care that needs to take place in the commonwealth.”
The abortion-rights group Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates said lawmakers had “snuck narrow and confusing ‘exceptions’” into something that should be regarded as basic health care, all the while keeping Kentucky's existing abortion ban firmly in place.
“Rather than offering meaningful medical care to patients with fatal fetal diagnoses or life-threatening pregnancy complications, this language forces doctors to wait until patients are near death before intervening,” said Tamarra Wieder, the group's Kentucky state director, in a statement Thursday.
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Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report.
