As a pro-life Kentuckian I have made no secret of my opposition to abortion. I wish elective, non-medically necessary abortion wasn’t available as it kills an innocent life. Over my time in the legislature, I’ve sponsored and co-sponsored such bills, and voted on even more of them. I stand by my work on those bills, some of which are now law. But something has been missing.
In the Spring of 2022, before Dobbs (also before the leak), I urged my Senate leadership to consider bills aimed at helping mothers and families choose abortion less frequently. Medical reasons, I told them, rarely are the basis for seeking an abortion. In my conversations with post-abortive women, the reasons they were looking for abortion to begin with were because the father of the child pushed her to do it, or her parents pushed her, or her church family guilted or shamed her for getting pregnant, or her coach or teacher told her she couldn’t succeed and be a mother, or her boss told her she couldn’t keep her job, or a college counselor told her she couldn’t go to school and be a mom, and the list goes on. And while Kentucky has done good work to limit abortion, we haven’t done enough to make child bearing and life easier for moms and babies (unborn and born), and to make the decision to choose life rather than abortion the easier, preferable choice. We need to fix that deficit.
Government can’t fix a boyfriend or parent that is pushing a woman to choose abortion,. Government cannot compel a preacher or deacon to show love and compassion — truly Christlike love and grace — to a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy. But government most certainly can make education easier to pay for, transportation easier to obtain, housing cheaper to maintain, adoption cheaper to pursue, and maternal and childhood good health easier to keep. The pro-life cause deserves a monumental, and bi-partisan effort in this direction, and the 138 of us that get to write and vote on the Commonwealth’s budget ought to make investment in these areas a priority just as important as any we make toward pensions, education, or infrastructure.
To participate in the policy conversation on this important topic, and in hopes of seeing a bill pass in 2024, I opened Bill Request #8 for the 2024 session. I have a very rough first draft of the bill in-hand, and I have attached both the bill draft (which includes revenue provisions which Kentucky Constitution § 47 declares I cannot include in a Senate bill) and a section-by-section summary to help navigate it. Also note that there are some budget holes in the draft while I wait for state agencies to provide various cost estimates — this is genuinely a rough, first draft! Without further ado, here is the Advancing Lives for Pregnancy and Healthy Alternatives (ALPHA) Act: