Newly enacted HB 5 prevents abortion based on gender, race or disability
Media Contact: Nicole Burton
502-564-2611
Nicole.Burton@ky.gov
FRANKFORT, Ky. (March 19, 2019) – Gov. Matt Bevin today officially signed into law House Bill 5, known as the Human Rights of the Unborn Child and Anti-Discrimination Act. HB 5 was was passed by overwhelming majorities in both legislative chambers during the 2019 Kentucky General Assembly.
Legal counsel for Gov. Bevin and Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) Secretary Adam Meier also today filed a response to a Louisville abortion clinic's motion for a temporary restraining order against HB 5. EMW Women's Surgical Center was so anxious to attack HB 5, the center filed its motion before the bill had even officially been signed into law.
In their U.S. District Court filing, the Bevin administration argues: "EMW and its abortionists have responded with a novel claim: women have a constitutional right to undergo race-based abortions, gender-based abortions, and disability-based abortions. In [the] plaintiffs' view, somewhere in the Fourteenth Amendment's penumbra lies a secret protection of eugenics. That is a perverse distortion of Roe v. Wade and its progeny."
In each of its four arguments, EMW has failed to justify the need for a temporary restraining order.
Additionally, while EMW claims that enjoining HB 5 will cause "substantial harm to others," the Bevin administration contends that the "others" harmed are unborn children who will be forced to undergo the inhumane disgrace of being aborted because of their race, their gender, or their non-lethal disability.
A temporary restraining order would also cause "substantial harm" to the medical profession in the Commonwealth. The Bevin administration asserts that "doctors must be viewed as healers, not as enablers and practitioners of eugenics and, more specifically, of overt racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and disability discrimination."
In addtion to HB 5, Gov. Bevin has worked with the General Assembly to enact several vital pieces of pro-life legislation, including:
- SB 4 (2016) – requiring informed consent (in-person or via real-time video),
- SB 5 (2017) – protecting children after 20 weeks of gestation,
- HB 2 (2017) – requiring an ultrasound be shown to the mother before a pregnancy is terminated,
- HB 454 (2018) – banning gruesome practice of live dismemberment abortion, and
- SB 9 (2019) – banning abortions after a baby’s heartbeat has been detected.
To download a copy today's filing by the Bevin administration, click here.