Federal Judge Blocks Kentucky Law That Made the State Abortion-Free
April 22, 2022 | Kentucky
A federal judge has temporarily halted a new Kentucky law that blocked the state’s last two remaining abortion clinics from performing the procedure.
Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings, a Donald Trump appointee, of U.S. District Court of the Western District of Kentucky, Louisville Division, ruled Thursday in favor of Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups by issuing a temporary restraining order that blocks Kentucky officials from enforcing its new law that would block the state’s only two abortion clinics from performing the procedure.
“Because plaintiff cannot comply with HB 3 and thus cannot legally perform abortion services, its patients face a substantial obstacle to exercising their rights to a pre-viability abortion,” the judge wrote, but added she was not evaluating “the constitutionality of the substance of the requirements in HB 3, but merely the enforceability of the provisions based on the impossibility of compliance.”
The law, HB 3, made Kentucky the first state in the nation to be abortion-free since the U.S. Supreme Court created a right to abortion in 1973 in the case of Roe v. Wade…. (Excerpt from the Virginia Star)
