Kentucky’s restrictive new abortion law has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge, handing a win to abortion providers challenging the harshest abortion restrictions in the country.
Louisville-based U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings, an appointee of former president Donald Trump, sided with the request by Planned Parenthood to block the enforcement of the sweeping new law.
Planned Parenthood asked the courts to block Kentucky officials from enforcing the law, saying that it essentially eliminates all abortion services in the state.
The law was vetoed by its Democratic governor. But the GOP-held legislature overrode the veto and swept it into law.
The judge placed the temporary order to expire in two weeks, absent new developments in the litigation. She said a hearing will be held between now and then.
The Kentucky law, H.B. 3, marked the hardest abortion restrictions to date in this latest wave of GOP states clamping down on abortions, as it virtually ended all abortions in the state. It banned abortions after 15 weeks, and it restricts minors’ access to abortions, and cracks down on medication abortions. It left no exclusions for victims of rape and incest. It was written to crack down on medical professionals, and will force the closure of the only two remaining abortion clinics in the state due to the new onerous requirements on doctors. This means that Kentuckians will have to go out of state for abortions.
Republican-led states are passing more and more extreme and sweeping anti-abortion laws that have been labeled unconstitutional and draconian.
Planned Parenthood in Kentucky argued in its legal filing that the law amounted to a “de facto ban on all forms of legal abortion” and, because it was rushed in before officials put key procedural requirements in place, makes it impossible for providers to comply with the law.
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