Weeks before the start of the Kentucky General Assembly's 60 day session, some lawmakers are already talking up their ideas.

Representative Nancy Tate of Brandenburg, a Republican, wants a massive omnibus bill aiming to protect Kentuckians from conception through death.

During a legislative hearing this week, Tate and former state representative and now pro-life activists a deal witching hour talked about it to lawmakers on the Joint Health Services Committee.

Our Mackenzie Spink tells us what's in the potential bill and why it's already stirring up tension in Frankfort.

More in tonight's legislative update.

It would be called An Act to Protect Vulnerable People.

A proposal seeking to increase criminal penalties or otherwise tighten up Kentucky laws regarding illegal abortion, pill trafficking, abortion, travel targeting minors, commercial surrogacy, medically assisted death, and organ procurement systems.

Adia Wisner, executive director of Kentucky Right to Life, says out-of-state companies are marketing abortion pills to minors in Kentucky, as well as practicing so-called death tourism to attract pregnant people out of state to seek an abortion.

Let's say that you want to get into selling socks, and you decide to order a case of socks, and you want to repackage them and sell them, you know, three pairs for a dollar out of your home and out of your basement.

That is also happening here with abortion pills by people who are not even medical providers, by individuals who are there to profit off the market, you know, buy a three pack.

And unfortunately, sometimes is coming to get called kill pills.

The Act to Protect Vulnerable People would also ban or restrict commercial surrogacy in the state.

Wisner says the industry commodified women and children, making the womb into a marketplace.

We are not talking about having carrying a child for your sister or helping someone very close to you.

We are talking about the large commercialization where carriers are hired for a price, or ads in Texas to say, be a surrogate for 60 for $100,000.

They're contracted carriers for these for children.

Under these contracts, the carriers required to terminate the pregnancy if the carrier if the purchasers changed, changed their mind, or if there's a fetal anomaly.

Several Democrats on the committee spoke in opposition of the bill, saying that the measures in the bill haven't been proven effective by data and that the language was unnecessarily inflammatory.

I would really encourage you.

I plead with you as you craft this omnibus legislation to really look at research supported solutions and not just, Maybe popular political talking points when we talk about death tourism, but we fail to work on exceptions for fetal fetal anomalies.

We set people up, we push them into a trap where we then call them death tourists.

What an ugly thing to say about someone who wants to be a mother.

There was also issue with the way that these policy ideas were being presented.

Representative Burke felt that putting so many measures in one massive bill would hamper a thorough vetting of each individual issue that she felt should be considered separately.

It's clear to me that it's not about doing the right thing, because doing the right thing is taking a slow and methodical approach, looking at things in great detail.

Filing each one of these as a single bill and workshopping them all.

I don't think that every member who is focused, forced to vote yes or no is going to have alignment on every one of these issues.

So I would welcome a conversation where we could find things that could move forward as bipartisan legislation, as opposed to an omnibus bill that I promise you I would fight.

Although the majority of comments on the bill came from the Democrats on the panel, Republican Senator Lindsey Titchener said she feels it will have a lot of support in the Republican dominated legislature this upcoming session.

I just want to say thank you.

I know you've gotten a barrage of negative comments about this legislation and the efforts that you're taking to preserve and protect human dignity and life in its most vulnerable form.

And I think the majority of the people that sit on this committee do support these measures, intended to be filed separately from the potential omnibus bill, is a measure that would require schools to show a video called Meet Baby Olivia, which is a computer generated video meant to represent fetal development.

But critics claim the animation isn't based on science.

This would be the third time the baby Olivia measure has been in front of Kentucky lawmakers.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm McKenzie Spink.

Thank you, McKenzie, for that report.

This was the last meeting of the 2025 interim Joint Committee on Health Services.

Co-Chair Senator Stephen Meredith says the Senate Health Services Committee will be hearing fewer bills per meeting during the regular session that begins in January to allow more time to discuss each measure.