Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron asked the state's Supreme Court to reinstate Kentucky's Human Life Protection Act and Heartbeat Law on Sunday, just days after a circuit court judge issued a temporary restraining order to preclude Kentucky officials from enforcing an abortion ban passed in 2019.
The press release from Cameron's office said that temporary restraining order allowed abortions to resume at two Kentucky abortion clinics.
"We are exhausting every possible avenue to have Kentucky's Human Life Protection Act and Heartbeat Law reinstated," Cameron said. "There is no more important issue than protecting life, and we are urging the state's highest court to consider our request for emergency relief."
Citing one passage from Cameron's motion, the court document reads:
"The degree of irreparable harm is especially pronounced here. The [state] General Assembly has declared it the policy of the Commonwealth to protect the lives of unborn children. Once an abortion has been performed, the life of that unborn child is over. No court order can bring the child back.
"To be sure, there are instances in which timing matters for an expectant mother who requires an abortion because her life is in danger. And the General Assembly has protected that expectant mother in such circumstances."
Kentucky is one of 13 states to have so-called "trigger" laws on the books, designed to take effect in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy research group.
Kentucky has limited medical exceptions with its ban, permitting abortions only when the mother's health is at serious risk.
Two abortion clinics, including a Planned Parenthood affiliate, challenged Kentucky's post-trigger-law ban, along with a separate law that prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
"We're glad the court recognized the devastation happening in Kentucky and decided to block the commonwealth's cruel abortion bans," Planned Parenthood said Thursday in a statement.
As Newsmax reported last week, state courts in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Utah also have temporarily blocked abortion bans.
And abortion providers are seeking similar injunctive relief in Idaho, Ohio, Mississippi and West Virginia.
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