A New Kentucky Bill Would Prosecute Illegal Abortions as Criminal Homicide

A Kentucky Republican lawmaker has introduced legislation that would let the state prosecute a person who gets an illegal abortion for criminal homicide, making it the latest state to try and clamp down on reproductive access in direct opposition to the will of the people.

Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, abortion is banned in Kentucky except to save the life of the pregnant person, meaning any abortion due to rape, incest, or just personal choice is illegal. The current law, though, does state that someone who receives an illegal abortion cannot be subjected to “any criminal conviction and penalty.”

The new bill, introduced Tuesday by Republican State Representative Emily Callaway, strips away that protection. The legislation would amend the current law to establish that life begins at fertilization, therefore all fetuses are owed the same protections as a living human.

“Unless specifically provided otherwise, in prosecution under this chapter where the victim is an unborn child, enforcement shall be subject to the same legal principles as would apply to the homicide of a person who had been born alive,” the text says.

The bill does make exceptions for “lawful” medical procedures carried out to save the pregnant person’s life. It also protects against prosecution for a medical procedure that results in a “natural or accidental” miscarriage.

The bill comes just a few months after Kentucky residents voted in the midterms against an amendment that would have said abortion is not a protected right in the state.

Heather Gatnarek, the ACLU of Kentucky’s senior staff attorney, slammed the new legislation as “absurd and offensive and dangerous.”

“It’s just so far afield from what we know Kentuckians want and what they need,” she told The Courier Journal. “We know people still need access to abortions.”

Kentucky is now the latest state to try to overturn the will of the people. The most notable one is Kansas, where lawmakers are trying to let cities and counties ban abortion after residents overwhelmingly voted to keep abortion protections in the state constitution.

Republicans have made clear they are going full-speed ahead with attacks on abortion rights, both at the state and federal level. Democrats are trying to combat their attempts, but it is an uphill battle. President Joe Biden has promised repeatedly to veto any federal abortion ban bills, but any legislation actually enshrining the right to the procedure is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives or even the Senate, which Democrats hold by a thin majority.

As thousands of residents of East Palestine, Ohio, struggle to find safe accommodation and tend to their alarming symptoms in the aftermath of a disastrous train derailment, Republican Governor Mike DeWine assured the public on Tuesday that he is “not seeing” any problems.

DeWine said this in response to a question on whether he was satisfied with the Biden administration’s response. DeWine contrasted himself from do-nothing Senator J.D. Vance, who complained (rightly) about the lack of a federal response; the Ohio governor said while he has spoken with President Biden, who offered assistance, he felt that no further assistance was needed.

While Vance and other Republicans might rightfully question the government’s inaction, they too have seldom done anything worth calling home about. Vance complained about the country being ruled by “unserious people who are worried about fake problems instead of the real fact that our country is falling apart.” Just hours before the train derailed, Vance posted a photo on Twitter of him aiming a gun at the sky, in reference to shooting down the Chinese spy balloon floating above the United States last week.

All this to say, most of Congress and the entire Biden administration is at fault here. Only a select, largely progressive group of lawmakers stuck by rail workers last year as they vied for reasonable work conditions and warned of disasters like this one occurring; the rest of Congress, including the president, imposed an inadequate contract on rail workers nationwide.

Meanwhile, rail companies have enjoyed continuing to chase profit with no abandon. They’ve been free to practice precision scheduled railroading, or PSR, which has led to smaller crews and bigger trains, and therefore greater strain on workers and greater risk for disaster. The Trump administration overturned an Obama-era rule that would’ve brought industry-wide improvement to the braking system—something that failed in East Palestine’s derailment. The Biden administration and Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation have failed to revive it.

Though DeWine may just be contrasting himself from hacks like Vance, he must understand that there are, indeed, problems. Thousands of people are paranoid and scared, as they’ve been left to guide each other through confusing and inconsistent compensatory processes led by Norfolk Southern, the same company that brought them to such calamity. People are sick, their animals are dying, and misinformation about the incident is running rampant. DeWine and other officials should embrace what we’ve come to see yet again is true: The government must do much more to protect the dignity and welfare of its people.

Dianne Feinstein, California’s longest-serving senator, is retiring. The 89-year-old congressional veteran will serve the remainder of her term.

“I am announcing today I will not run for reelection in 2024 but intend to accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends,” Feinstein said in a statement on Tuesday.

Curiously, it’s not actually clear whether Feinstein was aware the statement was released, or she just forgot it was happening. Reporter Matt Laslo asked Feinstein about the retirement, and she seemed to have forgotten, or, in a generous interpretation, misspoke:

Having served in the Senate for 30 years, Feinstein was the first female Jewish senator elected to Congress and then joined Barbara Boxer, also Jewish, in being the first female senatorial duo to represent a state at the same time.

At her best, Feinstein authored the 1994 federal assault weapons ban and chaired the Senate committee tasked with investigating and releasing a report on the CIA’s tortuous interrogation practices. At her worst, she could be seen chiding young children advocating for the Green New Deal, condescendingly complaining about them asking her to deliver a livable future. “You didn’t vote for me,” she said.

While Feinstein had filed early Federal Election Commission paperwork indicating she would indeed seek reelection in 2024, any momentum seemed to stall. In the past year, lawmakers and staffers alike have expressed concerns about the oldest sitting U.S. senator’s mental capacities and whether she could continue serving.

Amid the speculation surrounding the California senator’s future plans, other younger and well-known Democrats were raring to show their eagerness to vie for Feinstein’s seat. Representatives Adam Schiff and Katie Porter have already announced their candidacies; Representative Barbara Lee has said she will be running for Senate as well. Representative Ro Khanna has also indicated an interest in the seat, though he has said he would take Lee’s intentions into account.

This post has been updated.

As students sheltered in place during the shooting at Michigan State University Monday night, the experience was doubly traumatizing for many, as they had lived through such a nightmare before.

The tragedy at MSU, which left three dead and five wounded in critical condition, is the sixty-seventh mass shooting this year. There have been more mass shootings than there have been days in 2023.

Horrifically, school shootings seem to have become the norm in the United States. The MSU attack was Michigan’s second school shooting in about a year, coming 14 months after a student opened fire at Oxford High School in Michigan (four dead, seven wounded). It came on the fifth anniversary of the Parkland school shooting in Florida (17 dead, 17 wounded) and a little more than 10 years after the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut (26 dead, two wounded). Graduates of all three schools now attend MSU.

In a video that quickly went viral, one Sandy Hook survivor slammed the MSU shooting.

“The fact that this is the second mass shooting that I have now lived through is incomprehensible,” the 21-year-old, who uses the handle Jmattttt, said in the TikTok. “We can no longer just provide love and prayers. It needs to be legislation, it needs to be action. It’s not OK.”

One Oxford alum was across the street from where the shooting began and immediately called her mother. “She said that she had PTSD. She said she can’t believe this is happening again,” her mom told the Detroit Free Press, who asked that the student’s name not be used.

“She said, ‘Mom I just want to come home, I want to hold you.’”

The mother of another Oxford graduate, whose name was also withheld, told the Local 4 station that it was “like reliving Oxford all over again.”

The woman said that instinct kicked in for her daughter and for herself. “It’s really, really surreal to have to worry about this, and to know exactly what to do,” she said.

Three MSU freshmen had lived in Rochester, Michigan, a few towns over from Oxford, and vividly remembered the shooting there.

“I don’t feel safe anymore at MSU … and now we have to spend the next three years here,” one told local reporter Rachel Louise Just.

The Michigan state government has repeatedly called for gun control, and House Majority Whip Ranjeev Puri was livid Tuesday as he highlighted the fact that such mass shootings only happen in the U.S.

“Fuck your thoughts and prayers,” he said in a statement. “We do not need to live like this.”

Nikki Haley is running for president.

After much speculation of will-she-won’t-she spanning as far back as when she was floated as a potential vice presidential pick in 2012, the former South Carolina governor now joins the field against the same man who appointed her as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Haley, like many Republicans, has carefully trodden the line between maintaining warm relations with former President Donald Trump while also trying to distance herself from the twice-impeached leader whenever she felt compelled to. But in her video announcement on Tuesday, Haley called for “a new generation of leadership,” seemingly a slight dig at Trump.

Haley also pointed out in her ad that “Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections,” saying that has to change (perhaps an admission that it’s bad, and maybe invalidating, for a party to lose the popular vote).

Haley’s balancing act thus far has been pretty pathetic to watch, as has her journey to choosing to run in 2024.

After resigning as Trump’s U.N. ambassador in 2018, she moved back to South Carolina and published a memoir the following year, slowly building up funds through speaking engagements. In 2021, Haley had said she wouldn’t challenge Trump if he ran.

“I would not run if President Trump ran, and I would talk to him about it,” Haley told the Associated Press. “That’s something that we’ll have a conversation about at some point, if that decision is something that has to be made.”

And a conversation they did indeed seemingly have. Trump apparently blessed Haley’s candidacy. He recently told reporters that Haley called him in January to tell him she was considering jumping in and that he told her she “should do it.”

Though she seemingly calls for change in her announcement ad, Haley has long had the impulse to pacify Trump and has refrained from directly criticizing him the last few years. This, even while she’s running against him, says all you need to know about most of the people who have expressed interest in running against Trump: They simply don’t have the juice. Tim Scott, another South Carolina Republican rumored to be toying with a run supported by numerous members of Congress, has previously said he would support Trump in a 2024 bid (he said this after January 6, 2021), and then a year later implied he’d be happy to be Trump’s running mate.

And if Haley, or Republicans generally, plan to recoup the popular vote, they have a tall task ahead of them. Trump lost to Biden by over seven million votes in 2020. And Republicans’ unpopular agenda that focuses more on whipping up imagined culture wars and taking away the right to abortion has not paid off since, given the party’s relatively poor performance in 2022.

Haley and any other Republican of color who chooses to run will also deal not only with the Trump-elephant in the room but also navigating how they manage their own identity. In her ad, Haley described herself as “the proud daughter of Indian immigrants.” But she registered herself as “white” on her 2001 voter registration card. She has also previously invoked her Indian roots as she backed Trump’s 2020 bid, claiming “America is not a racist country,” in the same breath that she recounted discrimination her family faced upon immigrating to America.

Some of this racial navigation has also come in the form of Haley saying U.S. citizen Senator Raphael Warnock should be deported.

Haley will of course also face a challenge of being a woman of color candidate in general. One 2022 poll showed that, unfortunately, voters of all stripes see the “ideal” president as a man. But among Republicans in particular, 50 percent said the ideal president would be male while just 2 percent said she would be female.

While Haley navigates not trying to step on Trump’s toes and trying to appease the racist factions in her party, she assured in her ad that, in this ring, she has her gloves on. “You should know this about me: I don’t put up with bullies,” she said. “And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”