By Dave Andrusko
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin
Beginning today, NRL News Today will have the delightful “problem” of trying to keep up with pro-life legislation introduced in the states. Let’s first talk about Kentucky.
Jack Brammer of the Lexington Herald-Leader has reported that “Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said Senate Bill 5 will be heard by a Senate committee Wednesday and could get a vote on the Senate floor this week.” SB5 is the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which is already on the books in 15 states and is being introduced in others states as well.
SB5, like the laws in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, says you cannot abort a child capable of experiencing pain, a capacity that medical science has demonstrated takes place no later than 20 weeks.
Not only is Brammer reporting a receptive audience in the Kentucky Senate, he wrote, “Once approved by the Senate, the measure would go to the House, where newly elected Speaker Jeff Hoover, R-Jamestown, said there would be ‘overwhelming support’ for the bill.”
Prospects for bills such as SB5 and another to make ultrasounds available to abortion-minded women and defunding organizations that perform abortions, were greatly enhanced when on election night, “The Republican Party took over the last Democratic legislative bastion in the South on Tuesday, winning control of the Kentucky House of Representatives for the first time in nearly 100 years, and winning it in a big way,” wrote Tom Loftus for the Courier-Journal.
Republicans not only control the state Senate, they have a super-majority in the state House. “In recent sessions,” Loftus wrote, “the Republican Senate has easily passed a range of bills that were blocked by the Democratic House” under the leadership of outgoing Democratic Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo.
Those bills included pro-life measures identical to the pain-capable and ultrasound measures which passed the Senate but were sidetracked in the House.