FRANKFORT — The Kentucky General Assembly has overturned Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a bill meant to clarify the state’s abortion ban, which some doctors said fell short of that goal.?

House Bill 90 will immediately add to Kentucky law an itemized list of? certain conditions under which doctors can legally end a pregnancy — including during hemorrhage, ectopic and molar pregnancies. It will also make it possible for Kentucky to have freestanding birth centers.?

Doctors previously told the Lantern that the bill doesn’t clarify the ban for them and causes more confusion about when they can legally perform an emergency abortion.

Lawmakers voted to overturn Beshear’s veto largely along party lines. The governor had said the bill “threatens the life of pregnant women in Kentucky.”?

Planned Parenthood called the legislature’s override of Beshear’s veto “unforgiveable.”?Tamarra Wieder, Planned Parenthood’s Kentucky director, said it is a “a devastating blow to the health and dignity of Kentuckians.”

“Lawmakers had the opportunity to course-correct — to listen to doctors, to trust patients, and to put people above politics. Instead, they doubled down on cruelty and control,” Wieder said. “These power grabs do nothing to serve public health. They are a calculated attempt to cement government interference in the most personal, life-altering medical decisions — whether it’s denying care to someone facing a pregnancy crisis or medical care for trans Kentuckians.”?

Kentucky’s near-total ban on abortion has exceptions only to prevent death or the permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ. Doctors charged with violating the ban could be charged with a felony punishable by prison.

Lawmakers’ debate

In the house, Rep. Lindsey Burke, D-Lexington, said she couldn’t support the bill because of the abortion language. Burke has tried unsuccessfully in recent years to reverse the state’s abortion ban.?

“We can’t gamble with another Kentucky mother,” said Burke, calling women’s lives “too sacred to blunder again like we did before.”?

“We’ve made an exhaustive list in a place where an exhaustive list is unhelpful and limiting,” she said. “There were so many missed opportunities, and it just does not sit well with me that we couldn’t do better for you, Kentucky moms, so I’m sorry.”?

Rep. Sarah Stalker, D-Louisville, called the new abortion language “a calculated attack on women’s health disguised as legislative clarity.”?

Rep. Ashley Tackett Laferty, D-Martin, sided with Republicans in voting to override.?

“I strongly feel we should unequivocally be protecting the life of a mother in these situations,” she said. “While very legitimate concerns have been raised by both knowledgeable and compassionate people, I do genuinely feel that this legislation will save lives.”?

In the Senate, Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, said the effort may have been “well intentioned,” but “you cannot clarify what people are allowed to do medically, if you only use totally nonmedical terms that mean nothing to the health care profession.”

Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, D-Louisville, said she hopes the legislature works on improving the language in the future.?

“I’m glad to see that people want to make sure our laws aren’t causing pregnant women to die because we don’t allow doctors to effectively manage miscarriages,” she said. “I’m glad to see that this body has an appetite to address that serious life or death problem, and I hope that we can continue to work together to address that problem, to save pregnant women’s lives, but the way to do that is by making sure that we are including the medical community at the outset, so that we can make sure the language does what we’re seeking to accomplish.”??

Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer, R-Alexandria, called the bill “the beauty of life.”?

Funke Frommeyer has worked on freestanding birth center legislation since joining the General Assembly in 2024.?

In addition to ending a regulatory impediment to freestanding birth centers, “we were able to so clearly articulate some of the significant challenges that come along with pregnancy and natural abortions — abortions that you didn’t intentionally cause, these unintentional and dangerous situations,” she said.?

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, called reproductive health an “oxymoron” when praising the bill.?“We want to be a pro-life state,” she said. “And when we talk about reproductive health, that’s really just an oxymoron, because health is not ending a life, obviously, and if you’re not reproducing, then you’re ending that life. So it’s not reproductive when you talk about abortion rights.”?

Tichenor also said she’s had family members with “premature birth and ultimate ending of their child’s life” who were unsure how the abortion ban would affect them.?

“So this brings clarity for women to know that they are going to be protected if their health is at risk and if any of these instances come up and they need to just make the discussions about how they can protect their life,” she said.?

Stivers: ‘A political issue’?

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said Wednesday during a conversation over coffee with several reporters that there had been a lot of “misinformation” around the abortion ban — and he blamed Beshear for contributing to it. Beshear took issue with the new language that he said could jeopardize in vitro fertilization, among other issues.?

“I think he’s trying to create a political issue,” Stivers said, saying he believes IVF to be protected in Kentucky.?

“People were saying, ‘oh, there’s no exceptions to abortion.’ Well, that’s not accurate. There has always been the life of the mother. And then people were trying to say, ‘Well, what does that mean? Clarify that, what is the life of the mother? Is that … physical life? Is it mental health?’ Those types of things,” Stivers said.?

He specifically wanted to clarify the issue of ectopic pregnancies, he said, since his family experienced that very issue in 2015, years before the United States Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion and Kentucky’s ban went into effect.?

“My daughter-in-law had one and had to be terminated, because, if not, she and the baby — well, the baby had no chance — but she would have been very at risk if they let that go through,” Stivers said.?

He also admitted “there always will be” bipartisan appetite in the legislature to add exceptions for rape and incest, and he understand the arguments in favor of them.?

Despite that, he said, “when there has been a heinous act with rape or incest, there is a being created … and that being had nothing to do with this, but that being gets punished by the loss of life.”?

Both Republicans and Democrats have tried to add rape and incest exceptions to the abortion ban, but all attempts have failed.?

Meanwhile, Wieder with Planned Parenthood said the legislature’s override “made it clear: political posturing matters more than preventing needless suffering, more than protecting medical providers, more than saving lives.”