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.