A Kentucky law requiring doctors who conduct abortions to display and describe a patient’s ultrasound as well as play the fetal heartbeat to the pregnant woman violates the First Amendment rights of those physicians, a federal judge said.
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, and bans the state from enforcing it.
“This is a vindication of the rights of Kentuckians and their physicians, and it marks a significant victory against the General Assembly’s overreach into the area of reproductive healthcare,” said William Sharp, legal director of the ACLU of Kentucky.
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. This ruling puts us one step closer to getting Kentucky politicians out of the exam room,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project.
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.
Between 900,000 and 1 million babies die each year in the United States at the hands of physicians performing abortions. Between 3,000 and 3,500 of those children are killed in Kentucky every year.
(Photo courtesy of Kentucky Today)
By Kentucky Today
