A pregnant woman filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to restore the right to abortion in Kentucky, the latest challenge to the state’s near-total prohibition on the procedure.
The lawsuit, filed in state court in Louisville, claims that Kentucky abortion restrictions violate the plaintiff’s constitutional rights to privacy and self-determination. It requests that both state laws be overturned by a judge in Jefferson County Circuit Court.
The woman, identified as Mary Poe to protect her privacy, is approximately seven weeks pregnant, according to the lawsuit. According to the report, she wishes to terminate her pregnancy but is unable to do so legally in Kentucky.
The decision to become or remain pregnant is one of the “most personal and consequential decisions a person will make in their lifetime,” according to the lawsuit. Her legal team includes attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Without the ability to decide whether to continue a pregnancy, Kentuckians have lost the right to make critical decisions about their health, bodies, lives and futures,” according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiff stated in a statement that terminating her pregnancy is the best option for her and her family.
“I feel overwhelmed and frustrated that I cannot access abortion care in my own state, so I have begun the difficult process of arranging for care in another state where it is legal,” she said in a statement released by the ACLU of Kentucky. “This involves trying to take time off work and securing child care, all of which place an enormous burden on me.”
Russell Coleman, Kentucky’s Republican Attorney General, is among the defendants in the latest lawsuit.
“It’s the attorney general’s responsibility to defend the laws passed by the General Assembly, and we will zealously work to uphold these laws in court,” Coleman stated in a news release.
The suit was quickly dismissed as meritless by David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, a conservative organization that is strongly opposed to abortion.
“The ACLU’s suggestion that the Kentucky Constitution somehow secretly contains a hidden right to terminate the life and stop the beating heart of an unborn human being, despite Kentucky’s clear 150-year pro-life history, is absolutely absurd,” Walls wrote in an email.
The lawsuit seeks class-action status to include others who are or will become pregnant and want to have an abortion. It is challenging Kentucky’s near-total trigger law ban, as well as a separate six-week ban enacted by Republican legislative majorities.
The trigger law, which went into effect when the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, prohibits abortions except to save a patient’s life or prevent disabling injury. It makes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
The lawsuit is similar to one filed nearly a year ago by a pregnant woman seeking the right to an abortion in Kentucky. That challenge was dropped after the woman discovered that her embryo no longer had cardiac activity, but abortion rights advocates said the legal battle was far from over.
Kentucky voters rejected a ballot measure in 2022 that would have denied any constitutional abortion protections, but abortion rights supporters have made no inroads in the Republican-controlled legislature to weaken the laws.
Last year, Kentucky’s Supreme Court refused to lift the near-total ban, leaving abortion access virtually shut down in the state. Abortion rights groups have been looking for plaintiffs to challenge the ban.
Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said Tuesday that abortion bans in Kentucky and elsewhere have “wreaked havoc on people’s lives.”
“Those who can scrape together the resources may be able to travel out of state to get care, but others will be forced to carry their pregnancies to term against their will, often at great cost to their health or lives,” Amiri wrote in a press release.
The plaintiff in the new lawsuit stated that the decision to end her pregnancy should be her own.
“I am bringing this case to ensure that other Kentuckians will not have to go through what I am going through, and instead will be able to get the health care they need in our community,” according to her.
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