New KY abortion data: 14 abortions in 2021 provided to kids under age 15

Health care clinics and hospitals provided 14 abortions to teenagers or children under the age of 15 last year in Kentucky, according to new data released Friday.

Across the commonwealth, 4,441 total abortions were provided to patients in clinical settings. More than half of those — 2,684 — were for pregnant people between the ages of 20 and 29. But 363 of those abortions were given to young people under the age of 19, and more than a dozen were younger than 15, according to the 2021 Abortion Annual report published by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services’ Office of Vital Statistics, which provides no other information about the individuals.

Since 2017, at least 65 abortions have been provided to girls under the age of 15 in Kentucky, state reports show, and 1,609 to girls under age 19.

Under Kentucky’s trigger law, which has been enforceable since late July, abortions are only legal if the life of the pregnant person is at risk. There are no exceptions for rape, incest or fetal anomalies. Even though the legal age of consent in Kentucky is 16, and sexual intercourse with someone younger than 16 is considered rape, impregnated children and teenagers, like adults, can only lawfully get an abortion if a medical complication arises and it’s necessary to “prevent [their] death or substantial risk of death,” according to the language of the trigger law.

The two youngest children to receive abortions in Kentucky in the last two years have been 9-years-old, according to the Courier Journal.

The lack of exceptions under the state’s abortion ban, and the impact the vaguely-worded trigger law is having on OBGYN health care, which routinely includes providing evidence-based abortive procedures, is spurring renewed focus on the limits of reproductive health care access in Kentucky.

Now, abortion rights groups are pushing hard to defeat a GOP-backed constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would add words to the state constitution making clear there is no inherently protected right to abortion or the funding of an abortion, without exceptions. A television ad released Friday from Protect Kentucky Access, the campaign spearheading the Vote No on 2 effort, includes testimonial from a Kentucky woman who criticizes the lack of medical exceptions in the state’s abortion restrictions.

The overwhelming majority of patients who got abortions last year were adults, and more than 80% were administered at a fetal gestational age of 10 weeks or fewer. More than half of the patients (2,256) who got abortions had at least a college education; 1,380 were administered to pregnant patients over age 30; about 66% of the patients who got an abortion had other children; and 51% were medication abortions. That tracks with national data, which shows most elective abortions are induced using a two-dose medication regimen.

Only five of the 4,441 total abortions last year resulted in complications, according to the data. Most of last year’s abortions (3,788) were for Kentuckians. Others came from across the country, including Indiana (441), Ohio (53), and Tennessee (115).

EMW Women’s Surgical Center and Planned Parenthood — the state’s only two elective abortion providers before the abortion ban became law — provided 4,428 of last year’s 4,441 abortions.