Specifically, HB 90 says health workers can provide “lifesaving miscarriage management,” end molar and ectopic pregnancies, and treat sepsis, hemorrhaging, and more. But instead of specifying that doctors can legally provide emergency abortions in these scenarios, the bill’s language says doctors should “separate” the pregnant person and fetus. The anti-abortion movement increasingly calls this “maternal-fetal separation.” It’s not a medical term—it’s anti-abortion jargon, Wieder said. “Maternal-fetal separation” refers to c-sections or inducing labor rather than a much simpler, safer procedural abortion to end the unsafe pregnancy, she explained.
According to Wieder, the so-called “clarifications” that Kentucky Republicans added are part of a “national anti-abortion strategy to erase the need for emergency abortion care” altogether—just a couple weeks after the Trump administration signaled its position that hospitals don’t have an obligation to perform emergency, stabilizing abortions. In states that ban abortion, like Louisiana, health care providers report an increase in c-sections performed in lieu of emergency abortions to circumvent legal risk—despite the safety risks for patients. C-sections can require a six-week recovery period, and, compared to abortion, are substantially more invasive, with a higher risk of complications including hemorrhaging and impaired future fertility. “There are going to be deaths that didn’t have to happen,” a Louisiana doctor warned in a report by Physicians for Human Rights, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Lift Louisiana, and Reproductive Health Impact, published last year. “There are going to be severe complications that didn’t have to happen.”
Last summer, the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute published a paper claiming that emergency abortions are never necessary because health providers can simply perform c-sections. In response, OB-GYN and complex family planning specialist Dr. Nisha Verma told reporters at the time that c-sections are “far more complicated,” “dangerous,” and confusing than abortion, all for “the same end goal” to end a nonviable, unsafe pregnancy.
On top of the issues with HB 90’s “maternal-fetal separation” language, Wieder warns, is that the bill codifies into state law that health workers should only intervene “for serious and life-threatening perinatal medical complications.” In other words, the law asserts that doctors can’t provide emergency care unless the pregnant patient is imminently at risk of dying. This would make Kentucky’s abortion laws among the strictest in the nation. On paper, Kentucky’s ban currently allows abortions to prevent serious risk to the pregnant person’s physical health. (To be clear: Medical exceptions simply don’t work, either denying or delaying urgently needed emergency care because doctors fear prison time.)
Gov. Beshear hasn’t said whether he’ll sign or veto HB 90, and didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Jezebel. Last week, he told the Kentucky Lantern that “one question I’m going to have is: Is [HB 90] more or less restrictive than the current understanding in the medical community that we have right now?” This week, Planned Parenthood wrote a letter to Beshear imploring him to veto the bill. Over 85 Kentucky-based doctors signed a similar letter to Beshear. Unfortunately, even if Beshear vetoes the bill, the GOP holds a supermajority in the state legislature and could override Beshear’s veto.
State Rep. Sarah Stalker warned last week that the bill “gives false hope to women who may find themselves in a dangerous situation and doesn’t provide the clarity doctors need to protect their patients.” Wieder echoed this sentiment: “It’s just sad. If this becomes law, a lot of patients will show up thinking they can get care under it, and that’s just not true.” Dr. Virginia Stokes, a Kentucky-based OBGYN, told the Lantern that “in addition to being callous, this bill is not in line with appropriate standards of care for miscarriage management. It does not allow for treatment decisions until the woman’s life is already in danger.”
State Rep. Matthew Lehman (D) criticized both the bill and the posturing of anti-abortion lawmakers: “This body is the reason these women are in danger. We don’t give credit to firemen when they put out a fire that they started,” he said last week. Lehman also questioned why the amendment was “shoved in our face” without giving legislators any time to review it.
From the fast-tracking of the amended bill to Republicans’ faux-compassionate claims about trying to “clarify” the state’s abortion ban, Wieder sees all of this as strategic damage control from the anti-abortion movement. “We’re in a moment where abortion is extremely popular and resonates among Kentuckians,” she said. “So, Republicans are trying to rebrand themselves, trying to bring back Kentuckians they’ve lost, trying to show they all of a sudden care about our reproductive health with a bill that actually does nothing to expand access.”
