After big GOP defeat in KY, grownups admit it’s time for exceptions to abortion law | Opinion

Once again, House Speaker David Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers have to be the grownups in the room.

Earlier this week, they told reporters they would be open to a legislative discussion about exceptions to Kentucky’s abortion laws, despite the obvious misgivings of the band of unruly children known as Kentucky’s GOP supermajority.

Despite Kentucky voters sending a clear signal in 2022 when they defeated Amendment 2, no one even picked up Rep. Jason Nemes’ bill last year to add exceptions. It took the shellacking of GOP candidate Daniel Cameron at the hands of a 21-year-old girl named Hadley Duvall — I mean, Gov. Andy Beshear — to make them realize that even Republicans think you should be able to get abortion care when you’ve been raped by your stepfather or when you’re bleeding out from a miscarriage.

They might want to pay more attention when they realize that every state House member is up for reelection next year, and even Kentucky’s beleaguered Democratic minority saw glimmers of hope on election night.

Between the legislative session and the election, 2023 was an exhausting one in Kentucky and 2024 promises to be even worse. While Stivers and Osborne try to keep their kids focused on big policies like tax reform, little rascals like Josh Calloway and Lindsey Tichenor are probably planning new ways to tilt at “woke” agendas. What next? Christian liturgy in public schools, no more state sanctioned diversity efforts, school vouchers, new and interesting legislative torture for transgender and gay kids, statewide book bans?

(If you haven’t seen the video of Cody Conner, a Virginia Beach dad took on his local school board’s adoption of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s anti-LGBTQ policies on Oct. 10, it’s well worth a watch. Choice quote: “Never in history have the good guys been the ones to ban books.”)

But why would our legislators bother to act like grownups when they look at their colleagues in Washington? On Tuesday, there were two threatened or attempted fisticuffs in Congress; Sen. Markwayne Mullin told a witness to “stand his butt up” to fight, and our own Rep. Jamie Comer called one of his colleagues a Smurf for questioning his “investigations” into the Biden family (which are VERY IMPORTANT AND SERIOUS, so important that they have produced exactly nothing).

And all of this craziness is leading to a presidential election that is looking, if possible, even scarier than 2020. Voters are rightfully worried about Biden’s age and capabilities, while Trump is telling us once again exactly what he plans on doing. It’s not clear why Trump made a speech on Veterans Day, given that he refers to our war dead as “suckers” and “losers.”

But he did, in a speech that used Nazi-endorsed language about vermin, and other speeches that have included his very specific plans for a very authoritarian second term. It would include concentration camps for migrants (and his enemies), a purging of federal workers to install only Trump loyalists, a fully weaponized Justice Department to attacks his political opponents, and third or fourth term in violation of the Constitution.

Extremists are emboldened from Kentucky to Washington. Even Trump facing 91 indictments is no guarantee he won’t be the nominee or the next president.

I think it’s time to start worrying.