Joan Kofodimos

Opinion contributor

Kentucky legislators are back in Frankfort with another hypocritical and dangerous bill intended to threaten pregnant people’s access to reproductive health care.

Under the guise of “freedom from discrimination” and “ethical and humane treatment,” House Bill 5 seeks to prohibit physicians and other medical professionals from performing abortions if they have “knowledge that the pregnant woman is seeking the abortion, in whole or in part, because of … the sex … race, color, or national origin, …diagnosis, or potential diagnosis of Down syndrome or any other disability.”

If a physician performs an abortion under these circumstances, their doctor's license to practice medicine in Kentucky will be revoked, he or she will be charged with a felony and will be held liable for compensatory and punitive damages.

What’s wrong with supporting nondiscrimination and human rights? Take a closer look and you will see that this bill would have the exact opposite effect — it would feed bigoted stereotypes and threaten physicians’ ability to care for all patients.

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People of color already face disproportionate barriers to accessing health care, and race-based abortion bans make the barriers even higher. Latina and African-American patients could automatically become suspected of a race-based motivation for seeking an abortion and be denied care. Similarly, sex-based abortion bans have been strongly opposed by Asian-American advocacy groups because they feed on racist stereotypes.

Because providers would be responsible for judging a patient’s reasons for seeking an abortion, they’d be likely to feel pressured to reduce the risk to themselves by refusing to perform abortions on any person of color. This certainly seems to run counter to the expressed purpose of this bill, which is to protect Kentuckians from discrimination.

The prohibition on abortion in the case of a fetal disability diagnosis is particularly hypocritical when it comes from the same legislators who have been slashing support and benefits for people with disabilities. These legislators clearly don’t understand what’s involved in caring for someone with a disability — the cost, the time and emotional challenges of constant advocacy.

Only the parents, with the help of their trusted medical teams, can determine whether they can provide for their child and whether sufficient supports will be available. To criminalize a difficult decision such as this will just stop the flow of accurate information and resources that people need to make the decisions that are best for them.

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If the legislators backing this bill cared about discrimination, they’d be proposing policies to counter racism and sexism, and to provide services for people with disabilities. The bill is a smokescreen, intended to further attack and limit pregnant people’s access to reproductive health care.

This is the essential hypocrisy of the anti-abortion advocates in our state legislature. They pretend to care about human rights and discrimination, but they oppose putting resources into programs that would actually make a difference — such as affordable health care, a living wage, paid family leave and other workplace protections, prenatal care, and prekindergarten.

I hope you will recognize this bill for what it is and tell your legislators to vote against it.

Joan Kofodimos is the board chair of the Kentucky Health Justice Network and the parent of an adult with disabilities.

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