By Mark Maynard
Kentucky Today
Gov. Matt Bevin said his office will appeal a federal court ruling that block’s Kentucky’s law requiring doctors to do ultrasounds before performing abortions.
U.S. District Judge David Hale ruled late Wednesday in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union’s challenge to the law by the state’s only abortion provider, EMW Women’s Surgical Center. The ruling bars the state from enforcing the ultrasound law, which requires doctors to allow women to see ultrasound images of their unborn babies and to hear the heartbeat.
Hale said the law violates the First Amendment rights of those physicians.
“We are disappointed in the court’s ruling and will appeal immediately,” said Bevin spokeswoman Amanda Stamper.
Stamper said her office is confident the law will ultimately be found constitutional, just has similar laws have been in other jurisdictions.
“Judge Hale and the ACLU have brought injustice rather than justice to expectant mothers and their unborn children,” said Paul Chitwood, executive director of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. “Rather than ensuring a mother is fully informed about the abortion procedure, its risks and consequences, they use wild claims about the First Amendment to shroud the slaughter of sons and daughters. Not only is abortion the only legal form of murder in the U.S., it is an immensely serious medical procedure with significant risks yet Judge Hale and these liberal lawyers want the surgery to be regulated as if it were no more complicated than a doctor’s visit for a sore throat.”
Earlier this year, the state attempted to shut down EMW Women’s Surgical Center, the last abortion clinic in Kentucky, saying it lacked proper agreements with a hospital and ambulance service. The ACLU and a Kentucky law firm sued, arguing that the state was targeting abortion providers for medically unnecessary regulation. Another federal judge blocked the attempt to close the clinic. The trial was held earlier this month.
The ACLU said in a statement that the court recognized the law “appears to inflict psychological harm on abortion patients,” and causes them to “experience distress as a result.”
“We are pleased that Kentuckians will no longer be subjected to this demeaning and degrading invasion into their personal health care decisions,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “This ruling puts us one step closer to getting Kentucky politicians out of the exam room.”
Kentucky, which had 17 abortion providers in 1978, was trying to become the only state in the nation without an abortion clinic. Besides Kentucky, six other states – North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Mississippi, Wyoming and West Virginia – have only one such clinic.