U.S. Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case involving a 2018 Kentucky abortion law that bans a medical abortion method used after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Kentucky law later was struck down as unconstitutional.
Attorney Heather Gatnarek with the ACLU of Kentucky said the issue before the court involves the role of the state’s Republican attorney general, Daniel Cameron.
“The issue before the Supreme Court,” she said, “is very specifically about that procedural question: Should the attorney general have been allowed to intervene at such a late stage, after the courts had already struck down the law twice? Or did the Sixth Circuit get it right, and he shouldn’t have been allowed to intervene?”
The legislation made it a crime for doctors to use a second-trimester procedure known as “dilation and evacuation.” The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals permanently blocked the law from going into effect last summer.
The New York Times has a breakdown of the complicated case, which involves current Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who had been the state’s attorney general in 2018. The Times says that the U.S. Supreme Court seems to be inclined to let Kentucky’s new attorney general, Daniel Cameron, defend the D&E ban.
Abortion-rights advocates nationwide are closely watching the outcome of the Kentucky case after national protests over the Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow a six-week abortion ban to go into effect in Texas. The Texas law outlaws abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and goes a step further by allowing regular citizens to sue abortion providers and those who help a woman obtain an abortion. The law provides no exception in instances of rape or incest.
Gatnarek noted that if Kentucky’s 2018 law were to go into effect, it effectively would prevent many patients from ending a pregnancy. She emphasized that a pregnant person in her third trimester still can access reproductive health care in the Commonwealth.
“That procedure is still available in Kentucky,” she said. “The ban has not gone into effect, so the abortion providers are able to provide that second-trimester care.”
Gatnarek added that the Kentucky law is one of many ways politicians and anti-choice groups have tried to curtail abortion access. She said this year alone; state lawmakers nationwide have attempted to pass more than 100 new restrictions.
Cities within Ohio and the Buckeye State itself also are looking to curtail abortion. On Monday, Mason City Council neglected to pass a motion to vote on legislation that would completely ban abortion unless there’s a “life-threatening physical condition,” as well as prohibit abortion providers from establishing practices within Mason and encourage prosecution of those who support abortions through funding, transportation and more. The council will next meet on Oct. 25 and will decide then if there’s another path to the ban.
In May, nearby Lebanon passed an ordinance similar to Mason’s proposed ban. The ACLU of Ohio said Lebanon’s legislation is “blatantly unconstitutional” and ripe for legal challenge.
“Anti-abortion politicians in Lebanon have no business interfering in people’s lives and health care,” ACLU of Ohio legal director Freda Levenson said at the time. After Lebanon’s ordinance passed, the ACLU placed a billboard in South Lebanon saying “abortion is legal in all of Ohio” because, regardless of the ban, abortion remains legal in the state up to 20 weeks gestation.
“We’re seeing these laws over and over, copycat laws that pop up in states around the country,” she said. “Groups like ours then have to sue to prevent them from going into effect.”
In December, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case involving Mississippi’s 2018 law that outlawed abortions after 15 weeks. The outcome could affect the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and, subsequently, legislation and healthcare throughout the country, including in Ohio and Kentucky.
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This article appears in CityBeat | Oct. 13-26, 2021.