A request by Kentucky Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron to enforce Kentucky’s trigger law banning nearly all abortions has been temporarily granted.
The Kentucky Court of Appeals late Monday night approved Cameron’s request for emergency relief, which he filed Friday. The attorney general, who’s running for governor, asked the court to reinstate his ability to enforce the state’s trigger law, which bans all abortions except in cases of where risk of death or substantial risk of death of the pregnant person is a factor, as well as a six-week ban on abortions.
Cameron’s plea, which the court granted, was to overturn a July 22 injunction from a Jefferson Circuit judge that blocked enforcement of Kentucky’s abortion ban, keeping abortion legal in the commonwealth.
The Monday order means abortion is now illegal in most cases.
The Court of Appeals agreed, at a base level, that by barring the state’s chief law enforcement officer from enforcing duly-enacted state laws, his request meets the Kentucky Supreme Court’s definition needed to grant emergency relief in this context.
“Where the government is enforcing a state designed to protect the public interest, it is not required to show irreparable harm to obtain injunction relief,” the August 1 order reads, quoting from a state Supreme Court decision. “The statute’s enactment constitutes (the General Assembly’s) implied finding that violations will harm the public and ought, if necessary, be restrained.”
In other words, mere passage of a statute by the General Assembly implies that it is constitutional, at least to a degree. And when the ability to enforce a statute is blocked, “in situations such as this, irreparable harm is presumed,” judges wrote.
The Court of Appeals also found that, while the lawsuit brought by Kentucky’s two abortion providers challenging the statewide ban is still winding its way through the courts, “one cannot discount the reality that any abortions performed in the interim period . . . cannot be undone, should (Cameron) prevail on the merits in his defense of the statutes.”
The court also said it “expresses no opinion whatsoever as to the merits of the underlying dispute,” meaning the constitutionality of the trigger law.
The judges also noted that “nothing” in their order “shall be construed to limit medical providers’ ability to act to protect maternal health . . . even where a detectable fetal heartbeat exists.” The trigger law and six-week ban do not apply if a physician, using “reasonable medical judgment,” finds that performing an abortion is necessary to “prevent the death of the pregnant woman, or to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”
Cameron tweeted his thanks to the court Monday night for allowing “Kentucky’s pro-life laws to take effect while we continue to vigorously defend the constitutionality of these important protections for women and unborn children across the commonwealth.”
Planned Parenthood, who argues in its lawsuit with EMW Women’s Surgical Center that a right to an abortion is protected by the Kentucky Constitution, decried the court’s decision.
Rebecca Gibron, CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky, called it a “devastating day for Kentucky.”
“Make no mistake — this ban goes beyond abortion,” she said. “It is about who has power over you, who has the authority to make decisions for you, and who can control how your future is going to be.”
A spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, on behalf of EMW, said Monday night that the health care provider plans to appeal the order to the Kentucky Supreme Court on Tuesday.
In the meantime, “we have advised our client to stop all abortions at all stages of pregnancy for the time being.”
