The 2025 legislative session has ended, and Republicans have missed yet another opportunity to legally end abortion. You’re not alone if you’re thinking, “Wait, isn’t abortion already banned?” After Roe v. Wade was overturned and Kentucky’s trigger law went into effect, news outlets reported that abortion was “banned” in the Commonwealth. That is misleading.
Abortion clinics will close in August 2022, thank God. However, this does not imply that abortions are no longer performed. According to the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, Kentucky may have seen 2,095 self-managed abortions in a 12-month period despite its “abortion ban.”
The actual figure could be higher, as the country’s largest provider of self-managed abortion pills reported a 270% increase in pill requests nationwide. There is no reason to believe Kentucky is not contributing to the increase.
So, are these thousands of abortions taking place under the table, in violation of the ban and at great legal risk? No. They are legal.
Kentucky law allows mothers to perform abortions
Current Kentucky law (KRS 311.772) allows mothers to have abortions. It specifically excludes “the pregnant mother” from “any criminal conviction and penalty.” Only abortion providers, not mothers, are barred from performing abortions.
Many abortion-minded mothers are turning to pills to end their pregnancies, which I believe constitutes murder of their unborn children, but that is not the only option.
Kentucky law allows them to use do-it-yourself abortion methods with impunity. That means homemade concoctions, coat hangers, and even beating the child’s bellies until death are all options.
These appalling scenarios are not hypothetical. According to The Hill, following the Dobbs decision, “about a quarter” of women in the United States who were “unable to access in-clinic abortions” and chose to self-manage an abortion “turned to herbal remedies.”
Approximately 30% used ‘physical methods’ like punching themselves in the stomach, lifting heavy objects, or ‘inserting an object into the body.’ Approximately one-third used alcohol, other drugs, or medications.” These are vile things to consider, but they are legal. If it’s vile, it’s our responsibility. We are allowing it!
Republicans failed to pass bill that would finally abolish abortion
That’s why, in February, Rep. Richard White, R-Morehead, and Rep. Josh Calloway, R-Irvington, filed the Prenatal Equal Protection Act (HB 523) , which would have made the same homicide laws that protect the rest of us protect preborn children too. “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).
But, in contradiction of their professed belief in the sanctity of preborn life, most Republicans didn’t get behind this bill. For one, a vicious lie went around claiming it would subject an underage girl who was pregnant by rape to the death penalty.
This is impossible because the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons (2005) that executing people who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crime is cruel and unusual punishment and violates the Eighth Amendment. HB 523 would not have changed this and did not intend to do so, but it was the ill-informed excuse many pro-lifers used to oppose the bill.
What about adult women? Would the bill have given them the death penalty? Just as much as any other murderer. It would have applied the same level of legal protection to the preborn as to the rest of us, which is only natural given that they are as human as the rest of us.
As a result, Republicans failed to pass the only bill that would effectively end abortion. But how did they handle abortion this session?
They made things worse.
New law allows morning-after pills, doesn’t protect the preborn
Someone slipped some poison into HB 90, an otherwise beneficial bill that provides for freestanding birthing centres, by narrowing the definition of abortion.
The recently passed law defines “abortion” as “the performance of any act with the intent to terminate the clinically diagnosable pregnancy.” By including the phrase “clinically diagnosable,” it prevents morning-after pills and other similar measures from being legally considered abortion.
This phrasing is now one more thing that must be repealed in order for the law to protect human life equally beginning with fertilisation.
This confirms what those paying attention already knew: Republicans are scared. They’re afraid of being chastised for being too harsh on abortion, so they’re caving and clarifying, hemming and hawing. Imagine fearing criticism for being too harsh on murder!
Perhaps that is the problem. They have believed the enemy’s lie that abortion is not murder.
