Kentucky Supreme Court hands down key abortion ruling: 3 things to know
The Kentucky Supreme Court issued a long-anticipated decision Thursday on whether a pair of major abortion bans should be blocked until a couple of Louisville-based abortion providers' broader lawsuit challenging them is resolved.
The court decided the state government's near-total trigger ban on abortion and its prohibition on abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy both can stay in effect.
Is abortion legal at all in Kentucky?
For now at least, abortion is almost completely banned across the commonwealth (and has been for over six months). State law only includes narrow exceptions for life-threatening health risks.
Abortion was mostly outlawed in Kentucky last summer after Republican-appointed justices on the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling last June and eliminated a nationwide right to abortion. That ruling allowed the trigger and six-week bans, which Kentucky's Republican legislature passed in 2019, to take effect.
More:Abortion could be prosecuted as a homicide under a new Kentucky bill
What happens to Kentucky's abortion lawsuit now?
The overarching lawsuit was filed last year by Planned Parenthood and EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville. It first landed in Jefferson Circuit Court, but legal wrangling over whether the abortion bans should both be blocked until the case is fully resolved made its way to the Kentucky Supreme Court.
The Kentucky Supreme Court based its decision largely on whether Planned Parenthood and EMW, which provided abortions until that became prohibited, had legal standing to challenge both bans. It determined the abortion providers "do not have third-party standing to assert the constitutional rights of their patients."
The court said they do have first-party standing to challenge the trigger law on their own behalf as abortion providers, but not to challenge the six-week ban.
The justices are sending the broader lawsuit back to Jefferson Circuit Court, which then can weigh whether the trigger law is unconstitutional based on the abortion providers' "first-party constitutional claims."
More:Who can be convicted of a crime for abortion under Kentucky's trigger law?
What about the argument that the abortion bans violate Kentuckians' constitutional rights?
A big part of Planned Parenthood and EMW's case against the bans centered on their argument that the laws violate their pregnant patients' rights under the Kentucky Constitution.
Even though the court said the abortion providers don't have the legal standing to assert their patients' rights in this lawsuit, it emphasized that a patient could sue and make a similar argument themselves.
The court's majority opinion, written by Justice Debra Hembree Lambert, also emphasized that it is still an open question whether the state constitution protects abortion rights, saying:
"To be clear, this opinion does not in any way determine whether the Kentucky Constitution protects or does not protect the right to receive an abortion, as no appropriate party to raise that issue is before us."
Reach reporter Morgan Watkins at mwatkins@courierjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter: @morganwatkins26.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky Supreme Court keeps abortion ban in place: 3 things to know
