Kentucky Republicans want to attend your future OB-GYN appointment: Opinion


Nicole Stipp
Fri, March 4, 2022

Kentucky Republicans are giving me whiplash: they have spent the last two years shouting about personal freedom in health decisions, and then Rep. Nancy Tate introduced a forced pregnancy bill so draconian, she might as well have marked her calendar so the government could join me at my upcoming OB-GYN check-up.

Rep. Tate went against the preference of the majority of Kentuckians and filed House Bill 3, which inserts politicians and the government directly into the doctor’s office. The bill creates onerous, medically unnecessary hoops for people seeking abortions to jump through and installs completely useless and redundant reporting into the medical procedure that will hamper and further stigmatize abortion.

More: After hours of impassioned debate, Kentucky House approves more abortion restrictions

Repeatedly, abortion has proven 95% safer than carrying a pregnancy to term - particularly if you are in America, are poor, Latinx, Black or Indigenous. Time and again, elected officials have been reminded that the vast majority of abortions happen before 12 weeks, when a fetus is a prune-sized collection of cells - but they’ve stripped Kentuckians from any access to at-home abortion pills which allow them to manage their miscarriage in the privacy of their own home. Imagine being a young woman in Paducah who experienced a birth control mishap and now needs to drive more than 7.5 hours round trip to pick up pills that have been proven by the FDA safe enough to be self-administered. Not only does she need to come up with reliable transportation for the trip, but likely also needs to miss multiple days of work. If she doesn’t have a car or gas money for the trip, she is now forced to carry a pregnancy to term because Rep. Tate has determined that her forced birth is more important than her ability to make her own medical decisions.

More: Restricting access to reproductive care tells pregnant people they don’t matter: Opinion

Further, the majority of people seeking abortions are already parents who are very clear-eyed about what is at stake, both financially and emotionally, when adding an additional child to their family. Parents or anyone receiving an abortion will now be forced to file a birth-death certificate and it is not as if government systems have proven able to keep any of our personal information confidential. Now HB3 will require a government document disclosing your personal medical decision to end a pregnancy. What if you truly want your pregnancy, it is unviable and you have to end the pregnancy so that you can mourn your loss and perhaps start trying again? Your family will be forced to file this birth-death certificate.

In the most alarming part of this House Bill 3, the government is being asked to create an online portal that would publish the information on any physician that provides a medical abortion to a private citizen. Let me pause for a moment to reiterate this: the government would be publishing a list of names and information on physicians that provide abortions on a public, state-sponsored web portal. Since 1977, the National Abortion Federation reports 11 assassinations and 26 attempted murders of abortion providers as well as 42 bombings and 189 arsons of abortion clinics. I wonder if Rep. Tate – who is clearly passionate about the government documenting abortions – will be as enthusiastic to sign her name to the death certificates of abortion providers who are killed on her watch, under the systems she will build with this law.

More: How faith-based abortion narrative omits Jewish values of reproductive freedom: Opinion

In a truly free society, those who become pregnant are free to pursue parenthood or are free to pursue an abortion because their bodily and economic autonomy are more important to our community than forced birth. None of us are equal and none of us are free if some of us can be forced by the government to carry a pregnancy to term because we live too far away from a clinic, don’t have insurance plans that will cover the procedure, need to end an unviable pregnancy or simply do not wish to have any more children.

Nicole Stipp

Nicole Stipp is the Chair of the Board for Planned Parenthood Action Kentucky

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky Republicans want to attend your future OB-GYN appointment: Opinion