Abortion proponents are pausing for now in their efforts to overturn Kentucky’s abortion regulations following three failed attempts in court.
When Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022, Kentucky’s abortion trigger law went into effect. This law forbids abortion except to “prevent the death or substantial risk of death due to a physical condition, or to prevent the serious, permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ of a pregnant woman.”
This pro-life law has saved potentially thousands of unborn children’s lives.
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In 2021, the last full calendar year where abortion was legal in Kentucky, 4,441 abortions were done. In 2022, when the ban went into effect partway through the year, only 2,550 abortions happened. In 2023, the first full year of the abortion ban being in effect, only 23 abortions happened in Kentucky, nine of which were due to ectopic pregnancy. Kentucky does not yet have the 2024 report ready. Even if some women traveled out of state to get an abortion, it is highly unlikely that 2000-4000 women did so. These reports clearly show that laws prohibiting abortion do affect how many abortions happen.
Kentucky’s reports on maternal mortality rates (MMR) have not yet caught up to the time of the ban and after, but we can see the trends from 2013-2021.
The MMR report unfortunately shows that Kentucky’s MMR has been rising from 80.8 per 100,000 live births in 2013 to 143.6 per 100,000 live births in 2021. It would be encouraging to see a drop in MMR starting in 2022, when the trigger law went into effect, but it looks like we are going to have to wait a few more years to get that data.
In 2022, the ACLU tried to sue the state on behalf of pregnant women to get the abortion ban blocked. It worked. The ACLU won a temporary restraining order in June 2022 at the circuit court level until the arguments for the case could be heard about a month later. The circuit court at that time then issued an injunction against the abortion ban.
However, eight days later, in August 2022, the state’s Attorney General Daniel Cameron appealed the decision, and the appeals judge overturned the circuit court’s ruling, placing the abortion ban in effect again.
While the ACLU immediately filed an appeal to the Kentucky Supreme Court, the court did not grant them an emergency request. Instead, the court scheduled the oral arguments for November 2022.
Between November 2022 and July 2023, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled on another case that ended up affecting the ACLU’s lawsuit. The court basically said patients must bring a suit themselves; healthcare providers cannot bring it for them.
In response, the ACLU moved to dismiss their lawsuit in July 2023, since the lawsuit was a medical provider bringing a suit on behalf of potential patients.
However, at that time, the ACLU made it known that if any single patient wished to file suit with the state, they would help.
Sometime later in 2023, the ACLU got a patient to come forward to file a lawsuit, but they later dropped the case when the baby no longer had a fetal heartbeat.
In November 2024, the ACLU got another patient to come forward, “Mary Poe” (a pseudonym).
They helped her file the lawsuit as a class action complaint against Kentucky’s abortion bans. The lawsuit contained typical pro-choice rhetoric, stating such nonsense as:
- “At this moment, Mary Poe and the other putative and future class members, are suffering medical, constitutional, and irreparable harm because they are denied the ability to obtain an abortion.”
- “The inability to access abortion in the Commonwealth forcibly imposes the health risks and physical burdens of continued pregnancy on all Kentuckians who would otherwise choose to access safe and legal abortion.”
- “Abortion is a critical component of reproductive healthcare and crucial to the ability of Kentuckians to control their lives…Pregnant Kentuckians have the right to determine their own futures and make private decisions about their lives and relationships. Access to safe and legal abortion is essential to effectuating those rights.”
However, this lawsuit was also withdrawn on Friday, May 30 of this year.
This time though, we do not know why for sure the withdrawal happened.
Amber Duke, ACLU-KY Executive Director stated of the dismissal, “Today, attorneys dismissed a lawsuit challenging Kentucky’s two abortion bans, Poe v. Coleman. Decisions about healthcare care are and should remain private, and we will not be providing additional details about the dismissal.”
However, it is possible that “Poe” birthed a healthy child and therefore no longer “needed” an abortion nor was harmed in not being able to get one. She was about 7-8 weeks pregnant when the lawsuit was filed and would have been about 35-36 weeks pregnant when the lawsuit was dropped suddenly for no given reason.
I sincerely hope that Ms. “Poe” was able to have a healthy pregnancy, gain the support she needed, and that a healthy childbirth is what led to the lawsuit being dropped.
Right now, the ACLU is taking a step back and considering their next moves — as they should, since they have failed in three lawsuit attempts.
While they regroup, we can celebrate the fact that thousands of babies who would have otherwise been aborted are alive today due to Kentucky’s near abortion ban.
Additionally, over 40 pregnancy help centers exist throughout Kentucky and even more exist out of state close to the Kentucky border. Women in Kentucky have support and resources available to them, even if they are experiencing an unplanned or difficult pregnancy.
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