Rep. Lindsey Burke and her son, Ewan Mancillas, during a break in the action on the House floor, Jan. 12, 2024. (Photo by LRC Public Information)
Lexington Democrat Rep. Lindsey Burke is under “no delusion” that Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature will hear, much less pass, a bill to reinstate abortion access.
But, during the 2025 legislative session, she’s going to file it anyway. It will mark her third annual attempt.
Most Kentuckians lost abortion access when, in June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe. V. Wade, which had established the constitutional right to abortion. Kentucky’s trigger law went into effect immediately, which bans abortion except when the mother’s life is at risk.
Burke is pairing her abortion bill, which is verbatim the one she filed in 2024, with a bill to protect medical records of those who leave the state for abortions and another to expand the Health Access Nurturing Development Services (HANDS) program to make sure new parents in the state can learn about mental health following birth.
The bills were filed as House Bills 428, 429 and 430 in 2024. During that session, Burke went public with her own complicated journey to motherhood, marked, in part, by infertility and an expensive pursuit of in vitro fertilization (IVF). She shared her story to appeal to “friendly faces across the aisle,” she said at the time.
She intends to continue appealing to those lawmakers in 2025, she told the Lantern.
“There are more moderate, traditional Republicans who are interested in having this conversation, and I continue to try and work with him,” she said. “The bad news is that there aren’t enough of them.”
Republican Reps. Ken Fleming and Majority Whip Jason Nemes, in recent sessions, have filed bills seeking exceptions to the state’s near-total abortion bans for cases of rape and incest. Both were unsuccessful.
“I’m curious to see if any of those more moderate Republicans are going to file any bills like the ones we’ve seen over the last couple sessions that also didn’t move,” Burke said.
She also hopes more people are “softening” their stances on the issue, she said, and that “they realize they know people who need access for whatever reason and can’t get it.”
Meanwhile, a Louisville woman is suing the state over her inability to get an abortion in Kentucky. She traveled out of state for the procedure, which she described as a burden that left her “overwhelmed and frustrated.” Her case is in Jefferson Circuit Court.
Georgia, Texas: a warning
Burke also pointed to cases in other states of women who died after being denied emergency abortions as a warning to Kentucky. Georgia’s abortion ban kept Atlanta doctors from giving Amber Nicole Thurman a dilation and curettage, and she died, ProPublica reported. Texas’ abortion laws put doctors in a position to deny routine care as well, ProPublica has found.
“I hope that we don’t have to have a rising death toll the way some other states, like Texas or Georgia, do before we finally choose to take action,” Burke said.
She’s motivated, she said, by the Kentuckians who, like her, faced “difficulties in trying to bring a child into the world.”
“A lot of people who desperately want to be parents email me and tell me about their heartaches and their struggles, and they thank me for seeing them and sort of acknowledging them in the public space,” she said. “And so I’ll keep on filing these bills, because there are a whole bunch of people who feel unseen and unrecognized. It’s in grief and struggle and pain, for whatever reason, that they are seeking this kind of care. And by continuing to fight for this and stand for this and acknowledge them, we’re keeping their hope alive, that other people won’t have to experience these things.”
Burke hasn’t lined up co-sponsors for her 2025 bills yet, she said. Last year, only fellow Democrats signed onto the bills.
“We’re just going to keep putting this forward until the people of Kentucky get what they need,” Burke said. “However long it takes.”
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