Kentucky State Capitol building Photo: Kittugwiki, Wikimedia Commons

On March 29, Kentucky’s General Assembly passed a bill containing a host of new restrictions on abortions in the state.

Following in the footsteps of states like Mississippi, Kentucky’s House Bill 3 would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Kentucky Senate previously had passed the legislation, which now will head to Gov. Andy Beshear who will sign or veto it.

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Currently, Kentucky law bans abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The bill also would add restrictive operating procedures for clinics that offer abortions. For example, according to the summary of HB 3, legislators would require clinics to ensure that fetal remains are either cremated or interred. Additionally, legislators would require clinics to produce a combination birth-death or stillbirth certificate for every abortion.

The bill also mandates that those who wish to end their pregnancy by taking an abortion pill (also known as mifepristone or misoprostol) would only be able to do so through an in-person doctor visit. Currently, patients are able to instigate medication abortions through telehealth visits; however, under HB 3, this telehealth option would be banned.

Opponents to the bill claim that its measures are so restrictive that it would ultimately end access to abortions in the state of Kentucky.

Protesters in the visitors’ gallery on March 29 began protesting the bill as voting started. After displaying large banners that “stop the bans” and shouting various remarks at legislators, security escorted the protesters out of the Kentucky State Capitol building.

In recent weeks, many Democrats and Republicans have made impassioned speeches about the impact of Kentucky’s HB 3 on the state’s pregnant women, but one speech managed to go viral. While addressing her fellow lawmakers during the Senate committee meeting on abortion on March 10, Democratic Senator Karen Berg urged her colleagues to consider the facts when debating issues like abortion. Aside from being a lawmaker, Berg is also a diagnostic radiologist, meaning that she is often the doctor who conducts the first trimester of ultrasounds on pregnant women. The speech Berg gave went viral, with celebrities like Patton Oswalt praising the politician for her speech. 

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“I’m extraordinary personally familiar with the development of a fetus in the womb, and for you to sit here and say that at 15 weeks, a fetus has a functional heart, a four-chamber heart, that can survive on its own, is fallacious — that is not true,” Berg says in a video of her speech posted to her Twitter account. “There is no viability. I look around at my colleagues on this committee. I’m the only woman on this podium right now. I am the only physician sitting on this podium. This bill is a medical sham. It doesn’t not follow medicine. It does not even purport to listen to medicine, and for each and every one of my colleagues to be so willing to cast an aye vote, when what you are doing is putting your finger, putting your knee, putting a gun to women’s heads. You are killing women, because abortion will continue, women will continue to have efficacy over their own body, whether or not you make it legal.”

Across the river, abortion is legal in Ohio for pregnancies up to 22 weeks gestation, though Republican legislators have tried to shorten that window. In November and December 2018, the Ohio House and Senate passed a ban on abortion after six weeks of gestation. At the time, then-Gov. John Kasich vetoed the bill.

However, only one month later, when current Gov. Mike DeWine took office, an identical ban was created and signed into law in April 2019.

This ban has not yet taken effect, though, with a federal judge blocking the law in July 2019. Until the U.S. Supreme Court decides to take on the case, the law is unenforceable. 

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In December, the Ohio General Assembly passed Senate Bill 157.  If the law were to go into effect, doctors working with state public universities or medical centers will not be permitted to have affiliations with abortion clinics within the state of Ohio. The bill also banned abortions after a heartbeat is detected and would require fetal remains to be cremated or buried, among many other proposed abortion restrictions. If passed, the bill would have gone into effect on March 23. However, just weeks before the bill was set to go into effect, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Alison Hatheway temporarily blocked the state from enforcing Senate Bill 157.

The city of Mason has also attempted to pass restrictive abortion bans. After months of attempting to become a “sanctuary city for the unborn,” Mason finally gave up its mission to ban abortions during a December 2021 city council meeting. The council voted 6-1 to repeal an anti-abortion ordinance that it had passed in October and that was supposed to take effect in November. The result? Abortions are not criminalized in Mason.

Had the abortion ban stood, it would have outlawed abortion at all gestational stages within Mason’s city limits and punished those who “aid and abet” abortions through funding, transportation and more. Violators could have been fined $2,500 and spent a year in prison.

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Mason City Council Repeals Abortion Ban

Had the abortion ban stood, it would have outlawed abortion at all gestational stages within Mason’s city limits and punished those who “aid and abet” abortions.

Kentucky’s HB 3 is now waiting to be signed into law or vetoed by Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. However, Beshear, a Democrat who has voiced his support for abortion protections in the past, is expected to veto the bill. Republicans boast a majority in Kentucky’s House and Senate, though, so any veto by the governor could be overridden with votes subsequently cast in the House and Senate.


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Mason City Council Repeals Abortion Ban

Had the abortion ban stood, it would have outlawed abortion at all gestational stages within Mason’s city limits and punished those who “aid and abet” abortions.

This article appears in Mar 30-30, 2022.

Ashley Moor is the editor-in-chief of CityBeat. Originally from Dayton, Ohio, Ashley previously worked as a reporter for the Dayton Daily News and as the editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Dayton City...