Stronger Pro-Life Laws in Sight for Kentucky After Supreme Court Decision

The ruling could criminalize the “dilation and evacuation” abortion method.

QUICK FACTS:
  • The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 Thursday that Kentucky’s Republican attorney general can defend a state law restricting abortion procedures, Forbes reports.
  • The ruling could pave the way for the reinstatement of abortion restrictions that would criminalize the “dilation and evacuation” abortion method, commonly used even during the second trimester of a pregnancy.
  • Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron asked the Supreme Court to allow him to intervene in the case after other Kentucky officials decided not to pursue further appeals before Cameron took office, leaving lower court rulings that blocked the law in effect, Forbes explains.
  • The Supreme Court ruled that a lower appeals court was wrong for not leting Cameron defend the law.
  • Cameron can now ask the appeals court to reconsider putting the law back into effect, and even take the case to the Supreme Court if they don’t.
LEFT-LEANING JUSTICE DISSENT:
  • Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the ruling, Forbes noted.
  • She wrote that she was afraid the ruling “will open the floodgates for government officials to evade the consequences of litigation decisions made by their predecessors of different political parties.”
BACKGROUND:
  • The court only considered the technical legal questions of whether Cameron could intervene, and did not weigh in on the actual constitutionality of the abortion law itself, according to Forbes.
  • The court’s ruling is one of many abortion-related decisions the court is expected to issue soon.
  • The 6-3 conservative court has now ruled multiple times on Texas’ near-total ban on abortion, allowing the law to go into effect, dismissing the Biden administration’s challenge of it and blocking abortion providers from suing most of the state officials they named as defendants.
  • The court is currently considering whether to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, a ruling that could overturn Roe v. Wade, and could allow other states to follow Mississippi or ban abortion entirely, Forbes notes.

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