National Right to Life Wrongly Claims Kentucky Is Abortion-Free
As various Pro-Life regulations faced legal challenges in Kentucky, an article from National Right to Life discussing the lawsuits falsely claimed that the state is now “abortion-free.”
The claim could not be further from the truth in large part because of Kentucky Right to Life, a state-level affiliate of National Right to Life, opposing efforts in the state to abolish abortion.
Thousands of Abortions Happen in Kentucky
National Right to Life headlined the article “Kentucky to remain abortion-free for now” and claimed that “in 2023, the first full year of the abortion ban being in effect, only 23 abortions happened in Kentucky, nine of which were due to ectopic pregnancy.” In order to defend the claim, National Right to Life cited a report from the Kentucky Department for Public Health.
But the state government report only counted abortions in hospitals, meaning that the claim from National Right to Life entirely omitted the thousands of self-induced abortions happening in Kentucky, as well as the women from Kentucky who travel to other states to have abortions.
One analysis from the Society of Family Planning found that there were over 2,800 women in 2024 alone who received abortion pills inside Kentucky by mail through telehealth provision.
National Right to Life insisted in the article that “even if some women traveled out of state to get an abortion, it is highly unlikely that 2,000 to 4,000 women did so.” But data from the Guttmacher Institute showed that over 4,300 women traveled out of Kentucky for abortions in 2024, proving that the denial of such abortion levels from National Right to Life was baseless.
The claim from National Right to Life that the state of Kentucky is presently “abortion-free” can be easily debunked with even a cursory examination of publicly available abortion data.
These false assertions are sorrowfully common for some Pro-Life establishment organizations and Pro-Life news outlets. Charlotte Lozier Institute researchers, who work for the education arm of Pro-Life establishment group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, even warned that abortions are happening in conservative states even as “the media and many government officials want to have the public believe that no abortions are occurring within state lines.”
Rather than making such misrepresentations, National Right to Life should clearly answer why a state with Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature still has thousands of abortions happening every single year, more than three years after the overturn of Roe.
Kentucky Right to Life Keeps Abortion Legal
Beyond the shocking misrepresentations about abortion numbers in the state, residents should know the role of Kentucky Right to Life, a state-level affiliate of National Right to Life, in opposing legislation that would establish equal protection of the laws for preborn children.
Kentucky lawmakers had the opportunity to consider House Bill 523, which would have protected preborn people with the exact same murder laws already protecting born people, in the 2025 regular session. Addia Wuchner, the executive director of Kentucky Right to Life, said during a rally that the equal protection legislation was “not supported by us at this time.”
Wuchner contended that her organization does “agree to equal protection,” but added that Kentucky Right to Life also believes “women who are confused, who are vulnerable, who have been coerced by this abortion industry, they need love and compassion and truth.”
Another equal protection effort known as House Bill 300, filed two years earlier in the 2023 regular session, was also publicly opposed by Wuchner and Kentucky Right to Life.
Wuchner issued a statement at the time likewise insisting that Kentucky Right to Life has “a long history of supporting legislative measures to end abortion,” but the statement also opposed the equal protection legislation because they were “greatly concerned that under the proposed legislation all parties to the abortion, including the mother of the child, would face criminal charges.”
The statement invoked an “open letter to state lawmakers” spearheaded one year earlier by National Right to Life, which infamously said that the dozens of Pro-Life establishment groups behind the effort “do not support any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women” who willfully murder their preborn children and stand “firmly opposed” to such penalties in legislation.
National Right to Life therefore not only denies the persistent reality of abortion in Kentucky, but opposes bills to truly abolish abortion, at the national level and through Kentucky Right to Life.
These efforts to spread false information among anti-abortion conservatives and Christians, and to subvert the abolition of abortion in Kentucky, are shamefully one of the most significant obstacles in the way of establishing equal protection of the laws for preborn children in the state.