The ACLU is back
in court today once again to stop Kentucky’s attempt to block access to
abortion. We’ve been here before. Over the past three years, the Kentucky
General Assembly has passed bill after bill that limits — and even bans — a
person’s ability to get an abortion. And time after time, we’ve gone to court to
protect people’s rights to get the care they need.
At issue this
week is a law that makes it a crime for doctors at Kentucky’s last remaining
abortion clinic to perform an abortion procedure that is the standard of care.
In reality, the law is nothing more than a backdoor abortion ban: It would bar
the only procedure available in the state after about 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Following a trial
last year, a federal district court blocked the law, finding that it imposed “a
substantial obstacle to a woman’s right to an abortion”—as other courts around
the country similarly found. But the
Commonwealth of Kentucky appealed, and we are arguing the appeal in the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit today.
The
commonwealth’s opposition to this type of procedure is blatantly political, not
medical. Leading medical experts such as the American Medical Association and
the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists oppose these bans,
saying they interfere with a doctor’s ability to provide the best possible care
for their patient.
This restriction
is part of a national and statewide strategy to push abortion out of reach.
Since Jan. 2011, state lawmakers around the country have enacted more than 400
new restrictions on abortion that force patients to delay care, shut down
clinics, and make abortion care unaffordable.
Because of
regulations like these, today Kentucky has only one clinic left in the entire state.
And the state is trying to force that last clinic to close its doors,
leaving Kentuckians with no abortion provider at all. It’s only because we went
with the clinic, EMW Women’s Surgical Center, to get a court order that the
doors are still open; this case is on appeal.
Kentucky
politicians have passed yet more attempts to block abortion access: a flat-out ban
on abortion from the earliest weeks of pregnancy, and a ban based on the
patient’s reason for deciding to have an abortion. The ACLU and the clinic went
to court, and those laws are all blocked.
Kentucky
politicians are determined to stop people who have decided to have an
abortion from getting one. But we won’t turn from this fight. We will continue
this battle so Kentuckians can get the care they need, and the right to decide
what happens to their bodies.