LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A pregnant woman filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to restore the right to an abortion in Kentucky in the latest challenge to the state's near-total ban on the procedure.
The suit, filed in state court in Louisville, claims that Kentucky laws blocking abortions violate the plaintiff’s constitutional rights to privacy and self-determination. It asks that both state laws be struck down by a judge in Jefferson County Circuit Court.
The woman, a state resident identified by the pseudonym Mary Poe to protect her privacy, is about seven weeks pregnant, the suit said. She wants to terminate her pregnancy but cannot legally do so in Kentucky, it said.
The decision about whether to become or remain pregnant is among the “most personal and consequential decisions a person will make in their lifetime,” the suit said. Her legal team includes attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Without the ability to decide whether to continue a pregnancy, Kentuckians have lost the right to make critical decisions about their health, bodies, lives and futures,” the suit said.
The plaintiff said in a statement that ending her pregnancy is the best decision for her and her family.
“I feel overwhelmed and frustrated that I cannot access abortion care here in my own state, and I have started the difficult process of arranging to get care in another state where it’s legal,” she said in the statement issued by the ACLU of Kentucky. “This involves trying to take time off work and securing child care, all of which place an enormous burden on me.”
Defendants in the latest suit include Russell Coleman, Kentucky’s Republican attorney general.
“It’s the attorney general’s responsibility to defend the laws passed by the General Assembly, and we will zealously work to uphold these laws in court,” Coleman said in a statement.
The suit was quickly denounced as meritless by David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, a conservative group staunchly opposed to abortion.
“The ACLU’s suggestion that the Kentucky Constitution somehow secretly contains a hidden right to terminate the life and stop the beating heart of an unborn human being, despite Kentucky’s clear 150-year pro-life history, is absolutely absurd,” Walls said in a statement.
The suit is seeking class-action status to include others who are or will become pregnant and want the right to have an abortion. It is challenging Kentucky’s near-total trigger law ban and a separate six-week ban, both of which were passed by Republican legislative majorities.
The trigger law took effect when Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 and bans abortions except to save the life of the patient or to prevent disabling injury. It does not include exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
The lawsuit is similar to legal action taken nearly a year ago, also by a pregnant woman who sought the right to an abortion in Kentucky. That challenge was dropped after the woman learned her embryo no longer had cardiac activity, but abortion rights groups said the legal fight was far from over.
In 2022, Kentucky voters rejected a ballot measure that would have denied any constitutional protections for abortion, but abortion rights supporters have made no inroads in the Republican-controlled Legislature at chipping away at the laws.
Kentucky's Supreme Court refused last year to halt the near-total ban, resulting in abortion access remaining virtually shut off in the. Abortion rights groups have searched for plaintiffs to challenge the ban.
Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said Tuesday that bans in Kentucky and elsewhere have “wreaked havoc on people’s lives.”
“Those who can scrape together the resources may be able to travel out of state to get care, but others will be forced to carry their pregnancies to term against their will, often at great cost to their health or lives,” Amiri said in a statement.
The plaintiff in the new lawsuit said the decision whether to end her pregnancy should be hers.
"I am bringing this case to ensure that other Kentuckians will not have to go through what I am going through, and instead will be able to get the health care they need in our community,” she said.
FILE - Abortion-rights supporters chant their objections at the Kentucky Capitol, April 13, 2022, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Bruce Schreiner, File)
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — More than two dozen world leaders delivered remarks at the United Nations' annual climate conference Wednesday, with many hard-hit nations detailing their nations' firsthand experience with the catastrophic weather that has come with climate change.
Leader after leader recounted climate disasters, with each one seeming to top the other. Grenada's prime minister Dickon Mitchell detailed a 15-month drought at the beginning of the year giving way to a Category 5 Hurricane Beryl.
“At this very moment, as I stand here yet again, my island has been devastated by flash flooding, landslides and the deluge of excessive rainfall, all in the space of a matter of a couple hours,” Mitchell said. “It may be small island developing states today. It will be Spain tomorrow. It will be Florida the day after. It’s one planet.”
Grenada's premier wasn't the only small island nation leader who came with fighting words.
Prime minister Philip Edward Davis warned that “it will be our children and grandchildren who bear the burden, their dreams reduced to memories of what could have been.”
“We do not — cannot — accept that our survival is merely an option,” Davis said.
Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, highlighted the “inverted morality” of big emitters who aren’t taking responsibility for their impacts on countries who have the most to lose. He said high-polluting nations are “deliberately burning the planet."
Past promises of financial aid went unfulfilled for too long, so small island nations will have to seek justice and compensation in international courts, Browne said.
Marshall Islands president Hilda Heine called the climate crisis “the most pressing security threat” her country faces, but said she thinks the Paris Agreement process — where countries agreed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times — is resilient.
Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev took the opportunity to align his country with the predicament of small island developing states in a speech where he called out developed countries, in particular France and the Netherlands, for their colonial histories.
He described the harms of colonialism that continue today. Biodiversity loss, rising seas and extreme weather hit communities that are often “ruthlessly suppressed,” he said.
The United States also tried to show sympathy to hard-hit places.
“Do we secure prosperity for our countries or do we condemn our most vulnerable to unimaginable climate disasters?” United States chief climate envoy John Podesta said. “Vulnerable communities do not just need ambition. They need action.”
European nations also warned of climate catastrophe on their continent.
“Over the past year, catastrophic floods in Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as in southern Croatia have shown the devastating impact of rising temperatures,” said Croatia's prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic. “The Mediterranean, one of the most vulnerable regions, calls for urgent action.”
Albania Prime Minister Edi Rama said he was dismayed by the lack of political action and political will and leaders of many nations not showing up at climate talks as extreme weather strikes harder and more frequently. Frustrated with other leaders mere talk, Rama decried that “life goes on with old habits" and all these speeches filled with good intent change nothing.
“What is happening in Europe and around the world today doesn’t leave much room for optimism, though optimism is the only way of survival,” Rama said.
Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Europe and the world needs to be “more honest” about the trade-offs needed to keep global temperatures down.
“We need to ask hard questions about a path that goes very fast, at the expense of our competitiveness, and a path that goes some much slower, but allows our industry to adapt and to thrive,” he said. His nation this summer was hammered by successive heat waves after three years of below-average rainfall. The misery included water shortages, dried-up lakes and the death of wild horses.
Ireland environment minister Eamon Ryan channeled some hope, saying that the 2015 Paris climate treaty “still lives” and that countries who drop out will realize they are falling behind as other countries move forward and see benefits to their economies.
Negotiators at the summit are looking to hammer out a deal on how much money, and in what form, developed countries will pledge for adapting to climate change and transitioning to clean energy for developing nations.
On Wednesday morning, an early draft of what that final deal will look like was released, but it still contained multiple options that negotiators will wrestle over to reach a consensus by the end of the climate talks.
David Waskow, director of international climate action at the World Resources Institute said the latest 34-page draft reflects “all of the options on the table.”
“Negotiators now need to work to boil it down to some key decisions” that can be worked on at the second half of the summit.
The latest draft “does incorporate some new demands” including an ask for one of the largest negotiating blocs — the G77 plus China — for $1.3 trillion in climate finance, said Avantika Goswami, a climate policy analyst with the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.
“Developing countries have been clear that a provisional goal must be carved out to hold developed country governments to account,” she said.
In a veiled reference to China, Germany’s climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said all climate-polluting countries should make contributions to climate funds, one of the most contentious issues being debated at the climate talks in Baku this year.
“There are countries that have been successful and prosperous over the last years since 1992, and they also can make a great contribution to getting funds into developing countries," she said.
Argentina withdrew from the climate talks on Wednesday on the orders of its president, climate skeptic Javier Milei, as first reported by Climatica. The Argentine government did not respond to requests from The Associated Press for comment.
Climate activists called the decision regrettable.
“It is largely symbolic and all it does is remove the country from critical conversations going on climate finance,” said Anabella Rosemberg, an Argentina native who works as a senior adviser at Climate Action Network International. "It’s difficult to understand how a climate-vulnerable country like Argentina would cut itself from critical support being negotiated here at COP29.”
Associated Press writers Dorany Pineda in Los Angeles contributed.
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People walk outside the Baku Olympic Stadium, the venue for the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
Jennifer Morgan, Germany climate envoy, attends a session with the Marshall Islands High Ambition Coalition at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
John Podesta, U.S. climate envoy, speaks during a plenary session at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan president, speaks at a summit of the leaders of Small Islands Developing States at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Eamon Ryan, Ireland climate minister, speaks at a session with the Marshall Islands High Ambition Coalition at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Italy Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during a plenary session at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine attends a session with the Marshall Islands High Ambition Coalition at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Czech Republic Prime Minister Petr Fiala speaks during a plenary session at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
People walk through the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
People arrive for the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
