AG hopes to press anew for struck-down Kentucky abortion law

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky's Republican attorney general laid out his strategy Wednesday to champion his state's embattled abortion law in court, calling his office the “last line of defense" for the measure that would block a second-trimester procedure to end pregnancies.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron said his first goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to let him defend the 2018 law, which was previously struck down by lower courts. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the procedural dispute and scheduled a hearing next Tuesday.

Addressing anti-abortion advocates in a light rain outside the state Capitol, Cameron said he should have the opportunity to ”make sure that we exhaust all avenues in defending our laws.”

“We’re going to respect life here in Kentucky,” Cameron told those gathered. “We’re going to protect those who cannot speak for themselves. And I think that is an important responsibility of government, to make sure that we’re looking out for the most vulnerable.”

The disputed Kentucky law took aim at an abortion procedure known as “dilation and evacuation,” in which the fetus is removed with instruments. Abortion opponents call it “barbaric and gruesome.” Abortion-rights supporters say it’s a safe method for terminating a pregnancy.

The procedure accounted for about 300 of the 3,200 abortions performed in Kentucky in 2018, the year the law was passed, according to a report in the Courier Journal newspaper.

If Cameron prevails on the procedural issue, he said, he wants to give the law a second chance before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. The law was struck down by a federal district judge in Kentucky in 2019, and a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit upheld that ruling.

The law's opponents include the American Civil Liberties...