BY MICHON LINDSTROM KENTUCKY
FRANKFORT, Ky- The Senate has passed their first pro-life bill of the 2020 session.
Senate Bill 9, a “born alive” bill passed with a vote 32-0.
The legislation requires a medical professional to provide medically appropriate care to an infant if they are born alive after an attempted abortion or any other type of live birth situation.
Failure for a health care provider to do so would result in a Class D Felony.
Bill sponsor Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Crofton, has acknowledged he’s not sure how often—or if—this happens in Kentucky but he wants to ensure a ban is codified in law to prevent this practice from happening.
“We want to make sure the law is there to prevent it from ever happening,” Westerfield told reporters last week. “We want to make sure the protection is there, we want this to be zero times.”
While the bill passed with a vote of 32-0, several Louisville area Democrats simply did not vote for the measure.
Pro-choice Democrat Sen. Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, said he voted for the bill because they aren’t talking about a fetus.
“This bill does not deal with unborn children this bill deals with children who are born alive,” he said. “Since we are talking about children who are alive, I vote ‘I’ on this bill.”
But Planned Parenthood Advocates of Indiana and Kentucky argue this bill is nothing more than another attempt to restrict abortion access in the commonwealth.
“This is about driving a false narrative and a really an inflammatory narrative with the ultimate goal to ban abortion in Kentucky,” Tamarra Weider, Public Affairs and Policy Director with Planned Parenthood. “While I’m very saddened by passage of this bill know that we won’t stand for this.”
Weider went on to say these types of laws are make access to safe, and legal abortion all the more important.
“It’s fear-mongering, it’s completely inflammatory and used to drive a narrative that’s not even true about medical care,” Weider said. “We all deserve access to health care, based on our medical needs and our doctors, or providers’ best judgment and not political ideology and that’s what this bill is.”
The bill now heads to the House for consideration.
