Kentucky: Get Your Abortion Bans Out of Our Doctor’s Offices and Lives!
We Kentuckians are tired of lawmakers acting like they are doctors and interfering in our private medical decisions - especially when it comes to abortion or birth control. It’s been two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and it’s time to expose the devastating impact Kentucky’s abortion ban has had on all of us.
Doctors. Nurses. Patients. Everyone.
Not only are women forced to travel hundreds of miles out of state to receive abortion care. But under abortion bans like Kentucky’s, some doctors are unable to provide care for women who experience miscarriage or ectopic pregnancies for fear of arrest and jail time. So even more women are forced to travel out of state for critical care or wait until their life is threatened to get the help they need.
Kentucky has one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country, with no exceptions - placing patients’ health in danger and restricting physicians’ ability to provide the highest standard of care.
Kentucky’s cruel abortion ban is also forcing doctors, nurses, and medical students to flee the state. A recent survey of medical students at the three medical schools in Kentucky, conducted by University of Louisville medical students, found that 73.2 % "agree" they would consider medical training in another state due to Kentucky's anti-abortion policies. More than half of Kentucky’s 120 counties had no dedicated OB-GYN physician in 2021, and this exodus will make it worse.
The consequences are clear: Doctors, nurses, and medical students are unwilling to live and work in a state that puts them and their patients at risk. Doctors shouldn’t be forced to lie to their patients or deny care because the government says so.
Our state is already ranked 36 out of 50 for infant mortality and has the 6th highest rate of maternal mortality in the nation.
If our lawmakers truly cared about our families, they’d invest in maternity leave pay, earned sick time, affordable childcare, livable wages, and quality public education.
Instead, they’ve made abortion a crime. Kentuckians should never face an investigation or arrest for making our own medical decisions. Not us. Not our doctors.
In 2022, Kentuckians defeated the effort to ban abortion in the state constitution.
The majority of Kentuckians have made it clear,
they want and support access to abortion.
Without federal protections, the power to protect and expand reproductive rights in Kentucky is now completely in our hands. Join the Kentucky Reproductive Freedom Fund in the fight to ensure all Kentuckians can make complex reproductive healthcare decisions free from government interference.