“Kentucky is currently without abortion access, as the state’s only two abortion providers have suspended operations while they challenge a new law that they say makes it impossible for them to provide abortions legally.
The law—House Bill 3, passed in March—made abortion illegal after 15 weeks of pregnancy. It also instituted several new restrictions on abortion provision before this cutoff, including a ban on abortion pills being shipped in the mail or otherwise provided outside a physician’s office.
“Instead, the patient must visit a physician in person to receive the first dose and it requires her to be counseled that the procedure may be reversed after the first pill, an assertion which medical organizations say is not based on any evidence,” notes the Louisville Courier Journal.
The 15-week ban got the most attention, but it’s the other provisions that currently make it impossible for Kentucky’s abortion clinics to continue operating at all, say the providers. These provisions include requiring the state’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services to create an elaborate certification process for anyone making, shipping, or dispensing abortion pills.
“We cannot comply with the many, many, many, many burdens within the bill,” Tamarra Wieder, Kentucky state director for Planned Parenthood, told the Associated Press.
That’s in part because the regulations took effect immediately—before the processes for complying with them were even in place.
“The law requires that providers are, for instance, registered with the state, certified with the state as providers who can dispense medication abortions. That program doesn’t exist yet, so there’s no way for providers to be certified at the moment,” Heather Gatnarek, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Kentucky, told NPR.”