The school has taken a radical pro-abortion posture to the end that its professors currently do ALL of Kentucky’s surgical abortions.
What stunned many Kentuckians during the time period of the 2020 General Assembly was the revelation that the University of Louisville’s School of Medicine was deeply involved with Kentucky’s only operating abortion clinic. The extent of that involvement is expected to be researched and investigated by Attorney General Daniel Cameron. (Note: With Gov. Beshear’s blessing, Planned Parenthood began doing abortions at their offices in Louisville in late March during the height of the Kentucky COVID-19 crisis.)
Uncovering U of L’s abortion involvement began in 2015 when Joyce Ostrander, policy analyst for The Family Foundation, discovered that its School of Medicine had a “Ryan Residency program.” Looking into the program more deeply, she was surprised to learn that Ryan Residency programs are initiated by the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, whose home is the University of California in San Francisco.
The purpose of the entire effort is to provide abortions and train abortionists at universities located in states that do not allow public funding for abortion. In other words, they come alongside a university and provide a relationship that circumvents the spirit of the state law.
U of L has had its Ryan Residency Program operating since at least 2011, according to documents secured from testimony in a trial dealing with Kentucky abortion law.
But there are other disturbing facts that have been uncovered. In a news conference held by The Family Foundation staff on Feb. 26 asked Attorney General Daniel Cameron to investigate further. Policy analysts Martin Cothran and Joyce Ostrander, and Kent Ostrander, executive director, articulated these concerns, drawn from open records requests and other court documents:
- EMW Women’s Surgery Center has some kind of working relationship with two U of L School of Medicine professors. The two do ALL of the surgical abortions performed in Kentucky.
- Roughly 3,600 abortions are done at that clinic each year, with about 2/3s of them being surgical abortions, (Medical abortions – abortions generated by the patient taking medications – make up approximately 1/3 of the state’s abortions.)
- Since the Ryan Residency program started at U of L in 2011, as many as 25,000 to 30,000 abortions have been done at the clinic.
- Medical School OBGYN residents are required to go to the abortion clinic in order to learn the abortion procedures. (A student can opt out of actually performing an abortion, but they must go to the facility and read “family planning” materials.)
- At least one of the two U of L professors stated about doing abortions: “I consider it part of my — part of my job. That’s what the University of Louisville hired me to do. But, you know, EMW is just part of my job responsibilities.”
- The clinic likely brings in between $2.5 to $3 million each year through abortion procedures alone.
- The clinic does late-term abortions where the living, unborn child is simply torn apart, limb from limb in utero. Many of these late-term abortions are after the maturation point when an unborn child can feel pain. At this clinic, the professor testified, that there is no anesthesia administered.
- The clinic is used by the Ryan Residency program to “match trained clinicians with health centers and clinics in need of abortion providers.” Apparently, U of L is a part of the supply chain for creating abortionists.
Ultimately at issue, is whether the University of Louisville is spending tax dollars on providing or performing abortions. Kentucky law strictly forbids such. Here is KRS 311:715 (1): “Public agency funds shall not be used for the purpose of obtaining an abortion or paying for the performance of an abortion.”
In one of the grant requests, the author wrote, “Once Dr. _____ reviewed and studied state regulations as well as hospital regulations, the hospital policy regarding therapeutic abortions was less stringent than initially expected. The University of Louisville was not considered a state government facility. Therapeutic abortions could be performed for lethal and non-lethal fetal anomalies.”
Understand this! This doctor (deliberately unnamed above), IS the U of L Ryan Residency Program Director, “reviewed and studied” and then decided that U of L “was not considered a state government facility” to the end that unborn children with “nonlethal fetal anomalies” could be aborted.
The charge of the Feb. 26 news conference was to ask Kentucky’s newly-elected Attorney General, Daniel Cameron, to investigate U of L’s connections with EMW Women’s Surgery Center.
If U of L has spent any money for abortion, then they have broken the law. If they have not spent any money but rather have received some form the clinic, then they are operating in part on “blood money.”
Whether or not U of L has violated the letter of Kentucky’s law banning the spending of public funds on abortion, they have certainly violated the spirit of the law and the will of Kentucky citizenry.
