A Dilemma of Competing Rights

Third in a Series: Pro-life Laws Under Attack

The suit against Kentucky’s Heartbeat and Anti-Eugenics Laws is intent on maintaining the status quo. Kentucky’s defense asks Judge Hale to see Life in a new and better light.

Our wonderful attorneys want legal discovery to begin. They want the judge to consider whether EMW’s case actually benefits Kentucky women, physicians or the citizens who elect legislators to represent their views. We expect our lawmakers to create statutes that are in line with legal common sense and not merely court precedents based on tired, irrelevant rulings and opinions.

Kentucky, this is an opportunity for new vistas to a brighter future!

Let’s get personal

HB5 was delivered to Gov. Bevin for his signature on March 14, 2019, but had not yet been signed into law when EMW’s attorneys filed suit to oppose it.

In their opening document on March 14, 2019, the attorneys for EMW state that …“in violation of more than four decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence”, HB5 is unconstitutional because it bans abortion under certain circumstances, prior to viability.

While viability is their central point, many points are stated— 49 of them in their first document. Let’s look at point number three.
3 - “Plaintiffs challenge the Act because it undermines their mission to honor and support the decisions their patients make, whether it is to continue or to end a pregnancy based on their own personal circumstances and what is best for themselves and their families.” HB5 wrests the woman’s personal decision to get an abortion, and deprives her of the ability to make this personal decision.

HB5 has other persons in view. In part, the new law reads:
The Supreme Court of the United States of America has recognized that states have a legitimate interest in protecting the life of the unborn; and

• Recognizing the human rights of an unborn child does not contravene prior Supreme Court jurisprudence nor undermine a woman’s right to self-determination or bodily autonomy, but instead upholds the state's legitimate interest in protecting the lives of unborn human beings and the rights of persons regardless of sex, race, color, national origin, or disability; and
• The right to bodily autonomy and self-determination is separate and distinct from the termination of a pregnancy based on the unborn child’s sex, race, color, national origin, or disability; and
• Moral and philosophical concepts of dignity hold that all human beings are entitled to receive ethical and humane treatment and are to be respected and valued in all phases of life, regardless of sex, race, color, national origin, or disability…

Our attorneys upheld all these reasons (and others) why discriminatory abortions are unfair as well as prohibited by state, federal and international laws that support the rights of all people to dignity, equality, and freedom from discrimination that is based on sex, race, color, national origin, or disability.

It is obvious we have a dilemma of competing rights. Judge Hale must decide whether to favor the right to abortion or the right to life of pre-born babies and the rights of states to protect them. Either way, he can quote from the law.

Which view will he take?