ACLU dismisses its lawsuit challenging Kentucky's near-total abortion ban

Alex Acquisto, Lexington Herald-Leader on May 30, 2025

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — A Louisville woman who sued Kentucky late last year in an effort to overturn the state’s near-total abortion ban withdrew her lawsuit on Friday without explanation.

Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, the plaintiff — referred to with the pseudonym Mary Poe — was roughly seven weeks pregnant when she sued the state in November, challenging two laws that have kept abortion banned in Kentucky since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

In a news release, the ACLU announced it had asked for the lawsuit to be voluntarily dismissed Friday.

“Today, attorneys dismissed a lawsuit challenging Kentucky’s two abortion bans,” ACLU Executive Director Amber Duke said. “Decisions about health care are and should remain private, and we will not be providing additional details about the dismissal.”

The one-page dismissal, filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court, says the “plaintiff voluntarily dismisses this action.”

Abortion has remained largely illegal in Kentucky for the last three years under a six-week ban on abortion and a trigger law, so named because it immediately banned abortion in nearly all cases once federal abortion protections were overturned.

Together, the pair of laws prohibit any pregnancy from being terminated if there is still detectable fetal cardiac activity, except in cases where the life of the pregnant person is at immediately in danger — “life of the mother exceptions,” as it’s often referred to.

Neither Kentucky law includes exceptions for rape, or fetal anomalies incompatible with life.

Poe, at the time she filed her lawsuit, said she was seeking an abortion because “ending my pregnancy is the best decision for me and for my family.”

By denying Poe an abortion, the “government has denied her access to the care she needs,” the ACLU said.

Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a bill into law in an attempt to “ clarify” the medical exceptions legally allowed under Kentucky’s ban. Specific diagnoses, like an ectopic pregnancy — when a fetus implants outside the uterus — were added to Kentucky’s laws banning abortion, meaning doctors can terminate those pregnancies without fear of being charged with a felony.

But critics, including abortion policy experts, were slow to heap too much praise on GOP backers of the 2025 bill, in part because current law still does not allow for legal abortions in cases where a pregnancy is nonviable but doesn’t immediately affect a pregnant person’s health.

With the dismissal of the latest lawsuit, there is currently no active legal action challenging the constitutionality of Kentucky’s abortion bans.

The ACLU on Friday said it was “strategizing our next steps in this fight.”