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Whitney Westerfield, a Republican state senator, in Frankfort, Kentucky, in
February 2020. Photograph: Bryan Woolston/AP
View image in fullscreen
Whitney Westerfield, a Republican state senator, in Frankfort, Kentucky, in
February 2020. Photograph: Bryan Woolston/AP
Kentucky

This article is more than 3 months old


KENTUCKY SENATE PASSES BILL GRANTING RIGHT TO COLLECT CHILD SUPPORT FOR FETUSES

This article is more than 3 months old

Measure allows parent to seek child support up to a year after giving birth to
retroactively cover pregnancy expenses


Carter Sherman and agency
Wed 6 Mar 2024 16.28 CETFirst published on Wed 6 Mar 2024 14.22 CET
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The Republican-led Kentucky senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to grant the
right to collect child support for fetuses, advancing a bill that garnered
bipartisan support despite nationwide fallout from a controversial Alabama
decision also advancing “fetal personhood”.

The measure would allow a parent to seek child support up to a year after giving
birth to retroactively cover pregnancy expenses. The legislation – Senate Bill
110 – won senate passage on a 36-2 vote with little discussion to advance to the
House. Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers.



The Republican state senator Whitney Westerfield said afterward that the broad
support reflects a recognition that pregnancy carries with it an obligation for
the other parent to help cover the expenses incurred during those nine months.
Westerfield is a staunch abortion opponent and sponsor of the bill.

“I believe that life begins at conception,” Westerfield said while presenting
the measure to his colleagues. “But even if you don’t, there’s no question that
there are obligations and costs involved with having a child before that child
is born.”

The measure sets a strict time limit, allowing a parent to retroactively seek
child support for pregnancy expenses up to a year after giving birth.

“So if there’s not a child support order until the child’s eight, this isn’t
going to apply,” Westerfield said when the bill was reviewed recently in a
senate committee. “Even at a year and a day, this doesn’t apply. It’s only for
orders that are in place within a year of the child’s birth.”

The debate comes amid the backdrop of a recent Alabama supreme court ruling that
frozen embryos are legally protected “extrauterine children”, which spotlighted
the anti-abortion movement’s longstanding goal of giving embryos and fetuses
legal and constitutional rights that are on par with or even competing against
those of the people carrying them. These kinds of protections, if enacted, could
rewrite vast swaths of US law, including undermining in vitro fertilization
(IVF). In the wake of the Alabama ruling, multiple providers in the state
announced that they would suspend their IVF procedures.

More than half of all states have at least some measure on the books that
defines a fetus or embryo as a person, or that could be honed into a legal spear
to advance fetal personhood, according to an analysis by the pro-abortion rights
group Pregnancy Justice. In Tennessee, for example, dozens of women have been
charged under the state’s fetal assault law, often for suspected drug use.

Kentucky is among at least six states where lawmakers have proposed measures
similar to a Georgia law that allows child support to be sought back to
conception. Georgia also allows prospective parents to claim an income tax
deduction for dependent children before birth; Utah enacted a pregnancy tax
break last year; and variations of those measures are before lawmakers in at
least a handful of other states. In the wake of the outcry over Alabama,
however, Florida lawmakers paused their push for a fetal personhood bill.

The Kentucky bill underwent a major revision before winning senate passage. The
original version would have allowed a child support action at any time following
conception, but the measure was amended to have such an action apply only
retroactively after the birth within the time limit.

Despite the change, abortion-rights supporters will watch closely for any
attempt by anti-abortion lawmakers to reshape the bill in a way that “sets the
stage for personhood” for a fetus, said Tamarra Wieder, the Kentucky state
director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates. The measure still needs to
clear a house committee and the full house. Any house change would send the bill
back to the senate.

Explore more on these topics
 * Kentucky
 * Republicans
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