On Dobbs anniversary, doctors and Gov. Beshear call for repeal of Ky. abortion ban

In the two years since federal abortion protections were overturned, Kentucky OB-GYNs say they’ve witnessed how Kentucky’s abortion bans have “forced” them to compromise their health care expertise and, in doing so, increase risk to the health of their patients.

Dr. Alecia Fields, an OB-GYN in central Kentucky, said she’s had to “sit and wait until someone becomes sick enough to intervene with basic, necessary health care, because of these laws.”

The restrictions on her ability to provide care is “directly tied to increased experiences of pregnancy complications,” Fields added.

Fields spoke alongside other health care providers and reproductive rights advocates in Lexington Monday to highlight how the two-year anniversary of the fall of Roe v. Wade continues to hamper providers’ ability to provide the standard of care to their pregnant patients.

“As a doctor, I have been faced with decisions that I never thought possible,” she said. “Decisions that are not based on good medicine, but are driven by state law.”

Such laws that restrict her ability to provide care undercut her “skills and expertise” as a physician, Fields said.

Through a combination of Kentucky’s trigger law and a six-week ban — both of which became law when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 — legal abortion has been all but eliminated statewide .

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The trigger law criminalizes physicians from providing abortions except in medical emergencies that threaten a pregnant person’s life. The six-week ban, or fetal heartbeat law , bans the procedure after fetal cardiac activity begins, usually around the sixth week of pregnancy.

Organized by the Kentucky Reproductive Freedom Fund , the event also kicked off a statewide media campaign that will feature five mobile billboard trucks, five billboards and a handful of digital ads featuring messaging on the harms of the current laws and encouraging Kentuckians to sign a pledge calling for an end to those bans.

“This campaign sends a clear message to our elected officials: Kentuckians are tired of lawmakers interfering in our private medical decisions,” KYRFF Founder Ona Marshall said.

Marshall and her husband, Dr. Ernest Marshall, operated EMW Women’s Surgical Center, previously one of two outpatient abortion providers in Kentucky that closed its doors last June .

Earlier Monday morning in Louisville, Planned Parenthood and its allies also pleaded for lawmakers to restore access .

“I’m concerned about balancing medically standard care with legal risks. I’m worried about how I can counsel patients on their options, especially regarding birth control and preventing pregnancy,” said Dr. Michelle Elisburg, a pediatrician. “My main fear is conflict between medical ethics and non-medical legislation.”

Fields and Elisburg joined a chorus of health care providers across Kentucky who have decried the impacts of both laws .

Close to 300 doctors signed a KYRFF letter this spring urging the legislature to, at minimum, add exceptions to the ban. They say the ban as-is prevents them from providing the standard of care to their patients, including by forcing women with nonviable pregnancies to travel out of state for care that was previously legal .

Kentucky’s abortion bans do not include exceptions for rape or for fatal fetal anomalies that compromise a fetus’ ability to survive. Two bills to add such exceptions were filed during the General Assembly’s regular session earlier this year, but neither received a committee hearing.

A ‘test of basic human decency’

Gov. Andy Beshear also called for an end to the state’s abortions bans on Monday — a point he has publicly emphasized recently at out-of-state events .

When Roe was overturned, “it activated a trigger law in Kentucky that put into place what I believe is the most restrictive law on reproductive rights in the country,” he said at a Democratic Governor’s Association United in Defense of Reproductive Freedom event in Minnesota.

“In Kentucky right now, unless the life of the mother is at risk, there are zero options,” Beshear said. “If you have a nonviable pregnancy, if you’re going to hear your child die moments after it’s born, you still have to carry that child.

“That means victims of rape and incest are told they have to carry the child of their rapist. The rapist has more rights in Kentucky right now than his victim.”

Beshear said restoring abortion access “is a test of basic human decency.

“We ought to start thinking about this as being about human beings and not about a political party.”

Beshear also mentioned 22-year-old Hadley Duvall of Owensboro, whom he spotlighted in a re-election campaign television ad in 2023.

Duvall, who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather at 12, has become a national advocate for abortion access, appearing recently with First Lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris .

“If you are a candidate right now and you’re saying leave things to the states, then you are not pro-exceptions, because it leaves my people out,” Beshear said, taking a swipe at former President Donald Trump, who has said the issue should be left for individual states to decide .

“It leaves out the victims in Kentucky that become pregnant through no fault of their own through a horrible act that violates them,” Beshear said. “I think it’s incredibly important, as we look at this presidential race, to see who truly supports our people.”