Kentucky Pro-life Rally Raises Support for Abortion Information Bill
by Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com, February 21, 2007
A rally sponsored by Kentucky Right to Life at the state capitol on Tuesday featured a large crowd, a woman who had an abortion and regretted her decision, and promoted a bill in the state legislature to help reduce abortions further.
Kathy Rutledge was an 18-year-old high school senior when she had an abortion and now she wishes she could undo the decision. Rutledge, now 47, heads the state affiliate of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign and she told the pro-life crowd that abortion isn't a decision made lightly and spoke of the "broken hearts" of the women like her who have had abortions and regret their decision. "Abortion isn't only a legal matter," Rutledge said, according to the Louisville Courier Journal. "It's a matter of the heart.'' She also said it's a decision that, while abortion is still legal, should be one where women get as much information as possible ab out its risks and alternatives. A bill in the state legislature would do just that.
Kentucky already has an informed consent law that has helped women avoid abortions but Senate Bill 179, sponsored by Sen. Katie Stine, a Republican, would tighten up the law by doing more to make sure women get the information. It would require that women get the abortion information in person rather than over the telephone, as the law stands now.
In 2001, the Kentucky Medical Licensure Board interpreted the 1998 law to say that abortion practitioners didn't have to provide women the information face to face. The state Senate previously approved the measure on a bipartisan 34-3 vote but now it heads to the state House, which defeated it last year where House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Kathy Stein, a Lexington Democrat, refused to hold a hearing on it.
She's making the same threats this year.
But that's not enough to cause Margie Montgomery, executive director of the Kentucky Right to Life Association, to give up. She told pro-life advocates at the rally to keep pressing for a hearing for the bill or an assignment to a more favorable committee. "We need your help with House leaders," she said.
Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a Republican, also spoke at the rally and told the cheering participants that he would sign the bill into law if the legislature gets it to him. "We're hopeful that piece of legislation will find its way through the General Assembly and into my office," he said, according to the Courier Journal. "It’s important that that’s done in a way that that young lady fully understands what she’s going through and what she’s doing."