The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services has reported that enacting a law to protect preborn children led to an almost complete end to abortions, with zero reported in one month, and just two in the following month.
According to Kentucky Today, no abortions were committed in the month of September in the state. Two were committed in October, both of which were surgical procedures. One was an aspiration abortion, committed on a preborn child at nine weeks gestation; the second was a dilation and evacuation (sometimes referred to as a “dismemberment abortion”), committed at 16 weeks.
Kentucky is one of several states that had a trigger law in place for when Roe v. Wade was overturned, though it had initially been blocked in July by a circuit court judge. In August, however, the injunction against it was lifted, allowing the law to take effect.
Lawsuits were filed challenging the law by Planned Parenthood and EMW Women’s Surgical Center; the Kentucky Supreme Court has been hearing arguments in the case, and a decision is expected soon. But until that decision is handed down, preborn lives have been saved.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has been fighting to keep the state’s pro-life laws in place. “It is the responsibility of this office to defend the laws passed by the General Assembly,” he said in a statement last month. “Today we did so by defending Kentucky’s Human Life Protection Act and the Heartbeat Law in the Kentucky Supreme Court. We have asked the court to allow these pro-life laws to stand and to recognize that policy-making authority belongs to the General Assembly, not the judiciary.”
Matthew Kuhn, who serves as the Solicitor General of Kentucky and is arguing on behalf of the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General, likewise urged the Supreme Court to keep the state laws in place. He pointed out that there is no right to abortion in the Kentucky constitution.
“The attorney general respectfully urges the court not to go down that path, not to create the Kentucky version of Roe versus Wade,” he said, according to WLKY. “When it comes to abortion, our constitution here in Kentucky is simply silent.”
