Governor Bevin’s War On Abortion + Legislative Session Wrap

Bevin and Abortion

• Since Bevin first took office he has been taking pretty much every step possible to restrict abortion in Kentucky. In a recent Facebook live video, called this a “pro life state”
• What actions has he taken?
• January 2016: Matt Bevin signed an informed consent bill into law, which now requires a patient to meet with a doctor in person or by video conference 24 hours prior to the procedure. Patients used to be able to listen by phone message, so this added an extra burden on the patient
• This includes providing information about “other options”
• When the governor signed this law, there was a ceremony celebrating the “first pro-life bill in more than a decade”
• February 2016: Matt Bevin sues Planned Parenthood of Kentucky and Indiana, seeking close to $1 million in fines over a licensure issue right after PP had started performing abortions
• State halted their ability to perform abortions
• But the lawsuit was dismissed by Jefferson County Circuit Judge Mitch Perry
• Matt Bevin appealed, and the appeal is still pending, and PP is still not performing abortions
• March 2016: Matt Bevin sued the EMW Clinic in Lexington. The clinic wasn’t properly licensed, and didn’t have proper transfer agreements in place with a hospital and ambulance service. This clinic has closed in June 2016 because of the licensure issue and shut its doors for good in January of 2017.
• Didn’t use to have the same licensure requirement, so when the state had then apply for a new license, the clinic says they tried to comply, but there was “always something wrong with the paperwork”
• They tried for six and a half months to obtain the license, and then eventually lost their lease and closed
• TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) Laws: A lot of states have laws that strictly regulate abortion clinics, and in some states, these regulations also apply to other physician’s offices where abortions are performed and even just sites where medication related to abortions is given. A lot of these TRAP laws are really strict and burdensome and require a certain room size, corridor width, require clinics to maintain a relationship with a hospital, require that they be a certain distance from the hospital, etc but don’t actually include anything about improved levels of care to the patient.
• January 2017
• HB 2: Ultrasound requirement
• ACLU of Kentucky has already filed a suit challenging the law on behalf of EMW Women’s Surgical Center, and a US District court judge heard six hours of argument on March 23rd
• SB 5: 20-week ban, includes litigation fund set aside for legal challenges to the law
• See episode on January 8
• February 2017
• Operation Save America showed up at middle and high schools in Louisville. They showed graphic images of what you’d expect from an anti-abortion group
• 11 year-olds at Noe Middle seeing these images!
• OSA has also had reports of violence against abortion providers
• They held a conference that week and also personally met with the Governor
• OSA’s President stated that their “ultimate goal is that Kentucky will make history as the first surgically abortion-free state in the United States of America”
• March 2017
• Arguments heard in ultrasound case
• CHFS notified EMW Clinic that they would have to shut down April 3, EMW sued to halt shutdown and won.
• US District Court Judge Stivers found that patients would be immediately and irreparably harmed if he didn’t issue a temporary restraining order
• He also held that the temporary restraining order was in the public’s interest because the public is interested in the prevention of potential unconstitutional enforcement of the law
• Also noted that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in the suit
• No ruling on the merits yet

References

• http://wfpl.org/bevin-administration-files-lawsuit-lexington-abortion-clinic/
• http://wfpl.org/judge-dismisses-bevins-lawsuit-louisville-planned-parenthood/
• http://wfpl.org/closing-clinics-abortion-rights-increasingly-out-of-reach/
• http://www.wdrb.com/story/31121916/kentucky-gov-matt-bevin-signs-bill-changing-abortion-law
• http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/counties/fayette-county/article126627474.html
• http://wfpl.org/judge-temporarily-halts-shut-down-of-kentuckys-last-abortion-provider/
• http://wfpl.org/anti-abortion-group-protests-outside-louisville-middle-high-schools/
• https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/targeted-regulation-abortion-providers

End of the Session

• A MYSTERY project — Legislators, in very quick fashion, passed $15 million in bonds for a development project. Representative Shell revealed that this project would be in Eastern Kentucky, but I don’t think he was supposed to say that and without that bit of info, we would know literally nothing about it. Terry Gill, the recently appointed secretary of Economic Development, said that the state had been working on it for “several months” and that they were under very tight nondisclosure requirements. Even though the public knows next to nothing about this project, it passed the Senate 38–0 and the House 90–0. [http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/30/lawmakers-ok-15-million-mystery-project/99850414/]
• HB 330, the Yum Center Bill we’ve been talking about, passed through the legislature 30–7/72–8. When we last talked about this project, the Senate has attached a poison pill to the bill, requiring UofL to make specific contributions and maxing the amount that could go to the project. Those items got removed before the bill was passed. Chris McDaniel, the chair of the Senate committee which attached the poison pill, eventually voted for the bill, but said he was hesitant about letting UofL off with just a promise. [http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/ky-general-assembly/2017/03/30/final-bill-bail-out-yum-center-emerges/99819120/]
• 3 day limit on pain medication: we haven’t talked about this one, but this bill limits the amount of opioids that a doctor can prescribe to a 3 day supply. This could keep the supply of street opioid down and prevent people from abusing the drugs, but it also might drive people suffering from chronic pain to heroin. [http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/30/3-day-pain-pill-limit-heads-gov-bevin/99852342/]
• The Senate passed the bill which would have limited the Attorney General’s powers, but the House ended up not taking up the bill. Speaker Hoover said they “ran out of time”, but also made the statement “because of the situation between the governor and the attorney general, …we just didn’t have time to do it if we were going to do these other bills”. It sounds a bit like he might be waiting for things to cool down. [http://wfpl.org/legislative-session-ends-with-flurry-of-last-minute-activity/]

QUICK HITS

• A lawsuit against President Trump stemming from a rally in Louisville during the Presidential campaign has been allowed to move forward. [http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2017/04/01/judge-lawsuiit-against-trump-supporters-can-proceed/99906880/]
• Data for Democracy hackathon in Louisville over the weekend creates a new legislative API for analyzing the votes of legislators.
  Robert’s app: https://rkahne.shinyapps.io/kyleg/
  API link: http://derby-pie-politics.herokuapp.com/
• The FBI is investigating “antitrust allegations involving contractors”. They raided the offices of ATS Construction in Lexington, and sent a subpoena to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. The FBI has asked cabinet employees to preserve data going back to 2010. We’ll see where this goes. [http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article142629099.html]