Suit targets Kentucky’s heartbeat bill

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Abortion-rights defenders opened a new legal fight against Kentucky on Friday to try to block one of the country’s most restrictive abortion measures, which would mostly ban the procedure once a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Hours after Kentucky’s Republican-dominated Legislature passed the so-called fetal heartbeat bill, the American Civil Liberties Union was back in federal court in Louisville to challenge the measure. The legislation won final passage late Thursday and was sent to the state’s anti-abortion governor, Republican Matt Bevin.

Late Friday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to block enforcement of the fetal heartbeat bill.

It was the second-straight day the ACLU took aim at new abortion restrictions passed by Kentucky lawmakers.

ACLU attorney Brigitte Amiri said Kentucky is part of a broader agenda to push an abortion case to the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge the court’s 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

GOP-led legislatures in several other states are also considering fetal-heartbeat bills as optimism rises among conservatives that abortion bans might have a chance of prevailing in the reconfigured U.S. Supreme Court that includes President Donald Trump’s appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

The ACLU has filed four lawsuits challenging abortion laws in Kentucky that mostly passed after the GOP took total control of the state Legislature in 2017.