A pregnant woman in Kentucky who filed a lawsuit demanding the right to an abortion has learned her embryo no longer has cardiac activity, her attorneys said Tuesday.

The plaintiff’s attorneys signaled their intent to continue the challenge to Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban, but did not immediately comment on what effect the development would have on the lawsuit.

The complaint was filed last week in a state court in Louisville. The plaintiff, identified only as Jane Doe, was seeking class-action status to include other Kentuckians who are or will become pregnant and want to have an abortion. The suit filed last week said she was about eight weeks pregnant.

The flurry of individual women petitioning a court for permission for an abortion is the latest development since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year. The Kentucky case is similar to a legal battle taking place in Texas, where Kate Cox, a pregnant woman with a fatal condition, launched an unprecedented challenge against one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the U.S.

  • TipRing@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    It is ghoulish that this deeply personal information has to be made public just for this woman to get medical care that she always should have been able to get.

    • vortic@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Maybe worth being a little more blunt in this case:

      “Sorry ma’am, that corpse is going to have to calcify in your uterus, we’re pro life here.”

  • radix@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    GOP: We can’t get universal healthcare because that’s putting government in control of your medical conditions.

    Also GOP: Let’s pass a law that makes “Kentucky woman seeking court approval for abortion learned her embryo no longer has cardiac activity” a real headline.

  • N0body@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Pro-Life doesn’t apply when the fetus is already dead. This is pro-basic medical treatment vs. anti.

  • 🖖USS-Ethernet@startrek.website
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    11 months ago

    I say we start transplanting these fetuses into the people that don’t want the women to get care. Let them deal with it. Just open them up, drop it in and close it up and send them on their way.

  • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    This is a fucking insane dystopian nightmare. Fuck the GOP, fuck the SCotUS, fuck the US in general at this point. Fuck everything.

    • Chetzemoka@startrek.website
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      11 months ago

      This is the exact problem with these bans. The medical procedure in question (dilation and curretage) can be and is used in cases with a fetus in any condition. The same procedure can be used for an elective abortion, a medically necessary abortion, or even to complete a miscarriage that is already underway.

      The “abortion” procedure would have saved Savita Halapanavar’s life. I personally know three women who were in similar circumstances, losing a lot of blood during miscarriages that weren’t completing on their own.

      You can’t ban medical procedures that have valid use cases. These things are most properly regulated by medical professionals themselves.

        • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Look at you all “I think” and “I agree” like you have ANY place deciding for anyone’s fetus but your own – and I doubt very much you have that physical ability, going by that pompous word salad you just retched up.

          Between OB/GYNs fleeing these states with no one to replace them, and any who stay not willing to interfere in any way in medical situation that MIGHT be criminalized by someone who has not spent so much as a single fucking hour in medical school, you and yours are WELL down the road to 19th century levels of both maternal and fetal mortality.

          You spout this ignorance without having the slightest idea that where abortive medical procedures are outlawed, both mothers and babies die far more frequently: it’s not just about abortion, but about allowing doctors to practice without fear. Already women are reporting that they are having problems getting prescriptions for certain teratogenic or abortifacient drugs filled because they are of childbearing age, even though those drugs are for completely unrelated diseases – and that is to say nothing of a woman who gets cancer while pregnant. Chemo kills fetuses. That’s what it does, along with killing cancer cells. But you neither know nor care, you just need to have a say in other people’s lives and pregnancies, no matter what suffering is involved.

          You truly do not give a shit. You just want the world wrapped up in a neat little moral package and to feel like you’re a good person and you’re saving lives . . . while criminalizing the actual life savers involved: the “medical professionals” you are so quick to deride. At least they went to school for it; I can’t imagine you could even wield a coathanger.

          What you espouse is not goodness. What you espouse is flatly evil, like the whitewashed tombs Jesus spoke of, “clean” on the outside but full of death on the inside. What you want is unnecessary death and suffering, far more than you can imagine, all because you can’t stand the thought of a woman’s legs open for anything but procreation: look at your own words.

          abortion if the woman has a bad day or in general do not want to use contraceptives. Like this women who had 15 abortions.

          Look at that shit. Abortions if a woman had a bad day. Abortions if women do not want to use contraceptives. Women who you claim have had “15 abortions” like that’s even a thing (you clearly do not understand what an abortion entails, much less the uterine scraping D&C referred to in the above article). And you choose to post this disgusting personal code for “only women who are sluts need abortion” horseshit on an article where a baby has already died in the womb.

          That’s the level of maturity and compassion you have not just for women, but for sexuality in general.

          Yet you are absolutely convinced that YOU should have a say in some stranger’s uterus, because clearly, if she weren’t a slut she wouldn’t need an abortion, right?

          Wrong. Abortion has been medical care for as long as women have been getting pregnant.

          And before you even have a chance to go there, I would like to note that you have the entire 20th century from which to pluck overwhelming evidence for these statements, and if you’re just too goddamn intellectually lazy for that as well, then try a stroll through an old cemetery and explain to the rest of us why the vast majority of women’s graves have dates of death at less than 30 years of age.

          That 19th century level of disease and death is exactly what you want for women and their unborn children, you have absolutely no solution to the closings of maternity units in underserved areas that are already happening, much less to the flight of OB/GYNs to other states, you have no plan for addressing the medical deserts your short-sighted vicious rules are creating, but that does not deter you at all.

          Instead, you puke forth blatherings like the above, dressing your sexual shame and patriarchal control needs up in sanctimony and hypocrisy, absolutely believing anyone but god-botherers are fooled by this. We are not.

          TL;DR: Speaking solely for myself, I do not give two shits what anyone who is not pregnant has to say or think about anyone who is, unless it is to support their complete right to the privacy of their own healthcare.

          Get a mirror. Take a long hard look in it, because the problem here is not abortion. It is you and your own attitudes toward human sexuality.

        • lethargic_lemming@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          When laws are passed they should be made with consideration for the majority, not the exception. Personally, I don’t know any woman who has had 15 abortions, but I do personally know women, more than I can count on my hand, who really wanted babies, but had medical D&Cs out of necessity, otherwise their health and their ability to have children in the future would be gravely impacted.

          Unfortunately when you make laws using that mentality of preventing that one woman from having immoral abortions, it fucks up healthcare for every women in the country, whether they want to have children, willingly or not.

          You say “medical professionals” should not regulate this matter but you and every politician are even less so qualified. Every medical case is different, and unless you are in the room with the doctor and the patient, listening to all the patient’s status details and history, no one else really has the qualifications.

          Ultimately, if you really want to reduce the rate at which people have abortions, it’s been statistically proven that (1) having access to birth control, (2) sex education (3) investing in education in general can greatly reduce abortion rates. (One of many sources)

          Because surprise! No woman actually wants to have 15 abortions. In cities and neighborhoods where abortions are common, women are often undereducated, and lack the resources/situational decision making skills that would be better for their health and life long term.

          But that’s never the angle that media likes to frame it, because it’s not gut wrenching or eye catching as “we must stop this woman from aborting babies 15 times!”

          I really hope that you are able to change that mindset and in the future vote in a way that benefits all women.

        • Chetzemoka@startrek.website
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          11 months ago

          Medical science is clear on when a fetus is viable and when higher brain function occurs. You speak as if you believe the myth that “life” begins at conception, which is not congruent with medical science. Elective abortions should be safe, legal, and RARE.

          Did you know that the rates of abortion are increasing now that these bans have gone into affect? Bans do not work. Sex education, birth control, these are the things proven time and again to reduce abortion rates.

    • Lmaydev@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      Abortion is the name of the medical procedure. So removing a dead fetus is still an abortion.

      If you have to have these laws they should specifically target elective abortions. Not the medical procedure in general.

      Just to be 100% clear I don’t support abortion bans in any form. Just pointing out blanket banning a medical procedure is fucking outrageous.

      • zarp86@sh.itjust.works
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        If you have to have these laws they should specifically target elective abortions. Not the medical procedure in general.

        I understand you are just playing devil’s advocate here, but even this is a bad idea. As we’ve seen in Texas, the law isn’t designed for nuance, it is designed to attack women. The Texas law was supposed to have exceptions for health and safety of the woman/fetus, and we saw how that played out. Having a law that specifically targeted elective abortions would have the same problem where the state would undoubtedly put the burden of proof on the woman. “Oh, your baby has no heartbeat? Fill out this form in triplicate, get your doctor to sign it, have it notarized, and your abortion will be approved in 38 - 40 weeks.”

    • snooggums@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Yup, the filibuster that has been used almost exclusively by racists and bigots trying to deny any kind of positive change. Absolutely need to keep that shit around when we already have the presidential veto and two separate chambers holding up any kind of progress even before the opportunity to hold stuff up in the courts.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Democrats are openly happy to preserve the relic of Jim Crow that is the filibuster. Setting a timetable for another man’s freedom is their heritage. They call it incrementalism now.

  • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Conservatives cannot mind their own business under any circumstances. How they still trick people into believing ‘conservatism’ is beyond me.

  • BigMacHole@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    She killed her baby! To JAIL with her! If only she had waited until it was born to kill it she would be FINE by my Pro Life standards!

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The proper way to kill an infant in america is to feed it deregulated lead filled baby formula after its been born.

    • Seleni@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      But-but-but there could be a miracle and the baby’s heart could start beating again if she just prays enough and is devout enough! And so if that doesn’t happen then God obviously doesn’t like her and so she should suffer!

      Seriously though, it never was about the children. It was about making sure women pay for being of Eve’s get.

  • PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I already donate to PP and the ACLU, but is there some kind of legal defense fund for women in this kind of position? Do those organizations have everything covered so it’s better to just increase donations to them?

    I know there were a number of charities launching as well as independent activities helping women travel out of state for safe abortions, and I am just trying to get a sense of the best way we can put our money to use while we’re still working on reversing the political side of this.

  • Nougat@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    If you were an ultrasound technician or an OB/GYN, and the embryo shows cardiac activity, you should definitely not record that the embryo doesn’t have cardiac activity so that the woman can choose to terminate. That would be illegal.

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    11 months ago

    Suddenly she won’t have standing. Unlike, you know, when other people (on cases they like) can still push through when they don’t have standing.