By Nadia Ramlagan
Public News Service
Abortion rights advocates in Kentucky are concerned as the Department of Health and Human Services has
revoked a policy
requiring hospitals to provide abortion care in emergency situations.
Known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, the rule offered federal protection for the procedure, particularly in Kentucky and other red states with near total abortion bans.
Tamarra Wieder, Kentucky state director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, said stripping away protection will be
catastrophic
for women in rural counties who already face barriers to care.
“We know in a state like Kentucky that people have already turned up at emergency rooms because of our abortion restrictions,” Wieder pointed out. “Doctors have been forced to wait until patients were at life-threatening situations, sepsis, hemorrhage, before they are able to provide care.”
According to the National Institutes of Health, pregnancy complications are the
fifth-most common reason
women of reproductive age visit the emergency room.
Weider added rural communities across the Commonwealth suffer the nation’s worst family planning and sexual health outcomes and continue to struggle with access to safe and convenient obstetric and reproductive health care.
“I think it’s really important to note that 57% of Kentucky’s rural hospitals no longer offer obstetric services, 57%,” Weider emphasized.
Kentucky’s Human Life Protection Act, passed by lawmakers in 2019, banned all abortions except to save the life of the mother and it went into effect immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The same year, voters in the Commonwealth rejected a
ballot measure
which would have amended the state constitution to explicitly deny the right to an abortion.