Kentucky Measure on Informing Women of Abortion Risks Advances 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 1, 2006
Frankfort, KY (LifeNews.com) — Legislation with the goal of helping make sure women receive information about abortion’s risks and alternatives advanced in the state Senate Tuesday. The measure is designed to make sure abortion practitioners give the women the proper information 24 hours before having an abortion.
Currently women receive the abortion information via a recorded telephone message, but the measure changes that requirement to make sure they receive the details on abortion dangers in person.
The Senate approved SB 125 on a 34-3 margin and it now heads to the state House.
In the House, the House State Government Committee has approved its own version of the bill, HB 585 and has sent it to the full House for a debate and vote.
"It’s a good day for us," Michael Janocik, assistant director of Kentucky Right to Life, told the Louisville, Courier Journal newspaper. "Both sides want it, so we absolutely expect it will become law."
But abortion advocates oppose the measure and say that it will be an abortion ban of sorts by requiring women from other parts of the state to make two trips to either Louisville or Lexington, where the only abortion businesses in the state are located.
Amanda Kreps-Long of the Kentucky branch of the ACLU told the Courier-Journal, "We’re disappointed. … This essentially bans abortion for a whole segment of society."
Sen. Katie Stine, a Republican, said her measure would strengthen a 1998 Right to Know law the legislature passed.
Led by Democratic Sen. Ernesto Scorsone, pro-abortion lawmakers tried to amend Stine’s measure to allow the information to be given during a live telephone call, but senators rejected that idea on a 28-9 vote.
Related web sites:
Kentucky Right to Life – https://www.krla.org
Kentucky State Legislature – https://www.lrc.ky.gov
