The Kentucky state legislature overrode Democratic governor Andy Beshear’s vetoes of bills to block abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and to ban transgender athletes from girls’ sports teams.
The Kentucky House voted 76-21 and the Senate 31-6 to override Beshear’s veto of the abortion bill.
The bill bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy except in cases of medical emergencies that threaten a pregnant woman’s life or pose risk of “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” Otherwise, any physician found to perform an abortion after 15 weeks would lose their license for six months. There are no specific exemptions for cases of rape or incest in the bill.
The bill also bans the sending of abortion-inducing drugs via mail, requires women seeking an abortion to have an in-person consultation 24 hours prior to the procedure, and requires that any fetal remains be buried or cremated.
Opponents of the bill have charged that the law imposes so many restrictions that it will be impossible for doctors to provide abortions in Kentucky.
The bill “requires physicians performing nonsurgical procedures to maintain hospital admitting privileges in geographical proximity to the location where the procedure is performed,” Beshear wrote in his veto notice last Friday. “The Supreme Court has ruled such requirements unconstitutional as it makes it impossible for women, including a child who is a victim of rape or incest, to obtain a procedure in certain areas of the state.”
In addition to the abortion bill, the Kentucky legislature overrode Beshear’s veto of a law that will require student athletes from sixth grade through college to participate in sports teams according to the biological sex printed on their birth certificate. The override makes Kentucky the fourteenth state to to enact such legislation.
Beshear said in his initial veto message that the bill does not note “a single instance in Kentucky of a child gaining a competitive advantage as a result of sex reassignment.”
University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who has competed against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas in the NCAA, was present in the Senate gallery in support of the bill.