Informed Consent Law Reduces Abortion Numbers in Kentucky



Abortions at two Kentucky abortion facilities decreased dramatically after Kentucky's pro-life informed consent law took effect 11 months ago, the abortion facility's administrator said Wednesday at a Kentucky state senate committee hearing.

There were 3,057 abortions performed last year, down from 3,828 the year before, at EMW Women's Surgical Center abortion facility in Louisville, Executive Director Dona Wells said. About a third of the year's total – 1,015 – occurred in the first quarter of 2001. Then the pro-life law took effect, and abortions declined to 714 in the second quarter, Ms. Wells told the Health and Welfare Committee.

There were audible gasps from the audience, which included pro-life and abortion advocates, then a smattering of applause when Wells announced the decrease in abortions. “It became very clear to us that women were being precluded” from getting abortions, she said.

She said in an interview afterward that abortions also declined at her second location, EMW Women's Clinic abortion facility in Lexington, which is not licensed for use of general anesthesia and does only first-trimester abortions. Wells said she did not have figures for Lexington, but the rate of decline was comparable to that in Louisville.

The news came during a Kentucky senate committee hearing on a pro-life bill by Sen. Katie Stine, R-Fort Thomas, to add a restriction to the 1998 law that requires a woman to have counseling before getting an abortion. The Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure ruled in October that counseling could be done by telephone. Stine's bill would require a face-to-face meeting.

“Over the phone is not good enough,” Ms. Stine said. That “could be interpreted as a prerecorded message.”

Pro-abortion critics of the bill said the intent is to require women to make time-consuming, perhaps expensive, trips to Louisville and Lexington, the only cities in Kentucky with abortion businesses.

The same committee approved a pro-life bill to let pharmacists freely decline to fill prescriptions to which they have a moral objection, such as abortion drugs or drugs that may be used if assisted suicide were ever legalized.

The sponsor, Sen. Jack Westwood, said pharmacists “can be harassed or discriminated against” for refusing to dispense medications that could cause abortions.

(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email [email protected].)

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