Kentucky Republicans overrode Gov. Andy Beshear’s (D) veto Wednesday night on an abortion law so restrictive that the state’s few remaining clinics will no longer be able to operate. It’s effective immediately.
Abortion rights groups plan to challenge the law in court.
Planned Parenthood’s Kentucky state director Tamarra Wieder said that provisions in the law forcing providers to be certified by the state Board of Pharmacy before they dispense abortion medication and requiring the burial or cremation of fetal remains make it impossible for clinics to continue providing services, according to Reuters.
In his veto, Beshear made the practical effects of the draconian law clear.
“House Bill 3 contains no exceptions or exclusions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest,” he wrote. “Under House Bill 3, a 12-year-old child that is raped and impregnated by her father would not have the option of a procedure without both the consent of her mother and without also notifying her rapist — her father — at least 48 hours prior to obtaining a procedure or by petitioning a circuit or district court for a hearing…”
“Furthermore,” he added, “House Bill 3 is likely unconstitutional.”
Republican-controlled legislatures have been chomping at the bit to make abortion even less accessible in their often already intensely restrictive states, with Oklahoma earlier this month rolling out a law that would make it a felony for a provider to perform an abortion. The Oklahoma law was in part a response to the Texans flooding into the state seeking care, a direct result of their own state’s new legislation that creates a monetary-based incentive system for private individuals to turn over their neighbors who “aid and abet” post-six week abortions.
Conservatives on the Supreme Court made clear in oral arguments over a 15-week Mississippi ban that they are prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade, a decision expected to come this summer. In response, Republican-controlled states have queued up swaths of new abortion restrictions on top of the short bans and trigger laws many already have on the books that will go into effect the second Roe falls.
I don’t even know anymore, man. Other than that’s another state added to my no fly list.
Just imagining what the country would be like if states took this approach to Brown v Board of Ed–which they tried!–and instead of enforcing the law the SCOTUS and feds just shrugged and said, eh.
The race to the bottom continues. When the radical right wingers on the Supreme Court overturn (or gut) “Roe v Wade”, about half of the states will impose the religious dogma of so-called Christians on the entire population. They don’t care if someone is raped. They don’t care if someone is the victim of incest. They don’t care if a pregnancy is dangerous to the mother. They don’t care if an embryo has no brain or otherwise can’t live outside of the womb. They don’t care about anything other than forcibly imposing their purported religious views on all of us.
More is to come. Expect states (like Missouri is about to adopt) to prohibit their citizens from getting abortions in other states, and to criminally punish medical professionals in those other places). Will the radical Supreme Court majority allow this?
We are no where near the bottom. I would be remiss to forget thanking anti Hillary liberals in 2016 who let Trump win. They own this, almost as much as right wing loons.
Who says they didn’t succeed in ignoring Brown v. Board? In every state controlled by the Dixiecrats, they eventually settled on the response of moving white kids into private segregation academy schools, then defunding the public schools and also subsidizing the segregation academies with as much public money as they could shovel at them. It’s de facto segregation for any white parents who want and can afford it.
As to abortion access, I continue to believe from my own state’s example that the only thing that’s really going to motivate a pro-abortion electoral backlash is a few years worth of horror stories and actual women and their doctors getting sent to prison. I see zero – zero! – indication that Texans are worked up about this.
Amen to that. As furious as I was with the “never Hillary” crowd and the “we wuz robbed” Bernieites in 2016, I’m even more furious now. They have literally destroyed the future of this country.
Most people only learn from bad things occurring— repeatedly. Even then, right wingers just don’t care what happens to most of us. They hate us and want to rule in a way to repeatedly harm us.