The new law requires medical providers to give “medically appropriate and reasonable life-saving and life-sustaining medical care and treatment to preserve the life and health of a born-alive infant,” including after a failed abortion. It also requires them to give any “nourishment, medical care, medical treatment and surgical care that is medically appropriate.”
The bill was the first anti-abortion measure not vetoed by Beshear, who had the backing of abortion-rights supporters when he ran for governor in 2019. His office declined to comment.
Samuel Crankshaw, a spokesman for the ACLU of Kentucky, told Daniel Desrochers of the Lexington Herald-Leader, “We are incredibly disappointed Governor Beshear allowed Senate Bill 9 to become law. It is an inflammatory law that was motivated purely by politics and has no basis in the real-life practice of medicine. Lawmakers heard from a physician and advocates who testified to these facts, yet they still passed the legislation to score cheap political points.”
Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, said as the Senate passed the bill that it could force doctors to try to save an infant not mature enough to survive. “As a practicing physician who understands better than most in this room the limits of what medicine can and cannot do, I cannot vote for a bill that requires for a physician to do something that is not doable,” she said.
The next day, Dr. Brittany Myers, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Louisville, told a House committee that it would only apply to miscarriages, since abortions can’t be performed in Kentucky after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Before that, a fetus is not viable, and there are already standards of care for physicians to follow to care for a child that is born prematurely, she said.
The bill was the first anti-abortion measure not vetoed by Beshear, who had the backing of abortion-rights supporters when he ran for governor in 2019. His office declined to comment.
Samuel Crankshaw, a spokesman for the ACLU of Kentucky, told Daniel Desrochers of the Lexington Herald-Leader, “We are incredibly disappointed Governor Beshear allowed Senate Bill 9 to become law. It is an inflammatory law that was motivated purely by politics and has no basis in the real-life practice of medicine. Lawmakers heard from a physician and advocates who testified to these facts, yet they still passed the legislation to score cheap political points.”
Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, said as the Senate passed the bill that it could force doctors to try to save an infant not mature enough to survive. “As a practicing physician who understands better than most in this room the limits of what medicine can and cannot do, I cannot vote for a bill that requires for a physician to do something that is not doable,” she said.
The next day, Dr. Brittany Myers, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Louisville, told a House committee that it would only apply to miscarriages, since abortions can’t be performed in Kentucky after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Before that, a fetus is not viable, and there are already standards of care for physicians to follow to care for a child that is born prematurely, she said.
“This bill does not address any real-world problem in the setting of abortion care in the state of Kentucky,” she said. “This bill’s intent, I believe, is to shame patients and threaten providers and further limit access to abortion care.”
The bill's sponsor, Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Crofton, said, “We’re not asking for extraordinary measures. We are asking for medically appropriate and reasonable measures.”
Told what Beshear had done, Westerfield told the Herald-Leader, “I’m disappointed he didn’t sign it, but I’m grateful he didn’t veto it. I’ll take what I can get.” He noted that it "became law on the 48th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in every state," Desrochers writes.
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