The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a bid by Kentucky’s Republican attorney general to defend a restrictive state law, struck down by lower courts, that abortion rights advocates said would effectively ban the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Attorney General Daniel Cameron has asked the justices to let him intervene in defense of the law after Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s administration dropped the case. The Supreme Court is being asked to decide only that narrow issue, and not whether the law violates Supreme Court precedents holding that women have a right to obtain an abortion.
Abortion rights advocates have said the 2018 law, struck down by lower courts, would effectively ban an abortion method called dilation and evacuation – the most common form of abortion performed during the second trimester of a pregnancy.
