FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Legislation aimed at easing Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban by creating limited exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest was introduced Monday in the GOP-dominated House, as lawmakers wrangle with an issue at the forefront of last year’s campaign for governor.
Republican state Rep. Ken Fleming filed the measure on the last day that new House bills could be introduced in this year’s 60-day session. The bill’s prospects are uncertain, with House Speaker David Osborne saying the chamber’s GOP supermajority has not discussed any particular abortion bill.
Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban has been in place since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The state’s so-called trigger law took effect, banning abortions except when carried out to save the mother’s life or to prevent a disabling injury. It does not include exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
Fleming’s proposal would change that by making abortions legal in cases of rape and incest if done no later than six weeks after the first day of the woman’s last menstrual period, according to a statement describing the bill. The measure also would allow an abortion to remove a dead fetus and in cases of a lethal fetal anomaly, meaning the fetus wouldn’t survive after birth.
As much as I want people who experience rape or incest to have access to abortion, I feel like any person who is pro-life except in cases of rape or incest is just giving away the game that they are only trying to control women.
Because if they actually thought abortion was murder, that the fetus was a life, then it wouldn’t matter how it was conceived. It would be like saying that killing your 6-month-old baby was murder unless it was the product of rape or incest, and then it’s okay. But that would be absolutely ridiculous. Because a 6-month-old is a person and a fetus is not.
So it’s pretty clear, if they don’t think it’s murder, they just want to control women.
You’re absolutely right. And when I meet those people, I specifically ask them what the difference is between a fetus conceived by rape, a fetus conceived by accident and a fetus conceived intentionally. Because pregnancy from rape is not intentional, but they think accident shouldn’t be cause for abortion.
I could see a reasonable harm reduction case to be made, but I’ve literally never met a pro life person who supported harm reduction. Maybe they exist, but not in large enough numbers to make a difference here.
The harm reduction case is this: rape and incest are traumatizing enough that trapping a hormone flooded adult with the incredibly annoying and helpless evidence of that trauma could lead to a much worse scenario (the mother also dies, additional children die, the baby is slowly neglected to death, etc.).
I don’t know how good an argument that is, but I can at least understand it.
Rape exceptions are tricky. They sound good, but frequently the details make them untenable. If all it takes is an assertion by the woman, then every abortion just becomes a rape abortion. But if you have to formally accuse them, how does that process play out? How quickly? How effectively can someone force her to give birth anyway just by slow-walking the paperwork?
Women will have to prove they’re raped, which will then require an invasive examination for things like genital tearing and a police report.
Many women who get raped do not have the psychological fortitude to do that. Many women don’t even want to report a rape because of how traumatic it was. Until Roe was ended, they didn’t have to. They could just go and get an abortion, no questions asked.
Yes but also even more. Not every rape is violent. If tearing is required, I’d suggest the vast majority of rapes wouldn’t even count.
Completely agree with your second paragraph. No notes.
Yes, you’re right. I should have clarified that the examination might not even find any evidence of rape even if it happened.
I mean, six weeks from last period, I don’t think that running the paperwork at an accelerated speed for bureaucracy is going to make that cutoff.
The exceptions are bullshit, bureaucracy doesn’t speed up just because a person who is pregnant says they were raped or a victim of incest or their life was in danger. It just makes it seem like they are protecting rape and incest victims while really doing nothing, that Texas mother whose life was at risk still couldn’t get an abortion. She had to leave the state to get it done.
The speed of bureaucracy just means more children being born since the court will be dragging everything out.
How many women would say they were raped so they could get an abortion and let a person get convicted over it? There’s tons of stories of teens winding up pregnant and telling their parents they were raped rather than facing what their parents would do/think of them.
See this is why rape exceptions are so hard to get,
Not for the reasonableness of the above cited scenario, but the sheer paranoia conservatives exhibit about having a fast one pulled on their dumbshit morals that escalates to the point of being willing to let women die rather than risk someone being able to pretend to have a complication, no matter how difficult that would be, to slip an abortion past the wannabe morality police.
“Better Ten Innocents Hang than Let Even One Criminal Go Free!”
How many women would say they were raped so they could get an abortion and let a person get convicted over it?
If the other option was to be prosecuted for murder for lying in order to have an abortion, probably a lot more than it happens today.
If the other option was to be prosecuted for murder for lying in order to have an abortion,
Personally, I’d think that just having the abortion in another state would be more appealing than either of those two options.
I was under the impression that republicans have made that very difficult.
How so?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna38301
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/29/abortion-state-lines/
Wasn’t that hard to find out that republican lawmakers want to bam travelling out of state for abortions. Idaho already have one too.
Trump is campaigning on a national ban for one.
Which, of course, the teens you’re talking about who don’t want to tell their parents can definitely take the time and have the money to pay for, right?
Oh how generous of them 🙄
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2 Exceptions are a far cry from “erase”I totally misread that, Ease ≠ Erase.
Please disregard my criticism of the headline“Ease”
Well shit, looks like I should pay a little more attention.
I will miss visiting Kentucky. The bourbon trail was fun to do. But never again. I think I’ll stay out of all states save for New York from now going forward.
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