It's the end of the week.

Week one of the 2026 Kentucky General Assembly and regular session, and the prosecution of a Kentucky woman who allegedly took abortion pills is firing up both sides of the abortion debate.

As our June Lefler reports, pro and anti-abortion rights advocates alike want state lawmakers to tweak Kentucky's current abortion ban.

Melinda Spencer sought medical attention after allegedly taking abortion pills, and she was charged with fetal homicide.

Now, gratefully, the prosecutor has dropped that charge, but she's still in jail.

This Lexington Democrat proposes House Bill 23.

It would bar legal prosecution and investigations into women who've had or are seeking an abortion, and doctors or others who discuss abortion options.

We have, organizations that we know and appreciate that are actively helping women to seek health care in other states.

They've received threats.

They've received information about being surveilled, having people watching them, tracking their online movements, reporting the things that they're doing, and really creating a climate of fear.

In Melinda Spencer's case, the prosecutor dropped her highest charge, saying Kentucky's abortion ban excludes women from prosecution.

So we've never advocated on criminalizing women.

That's Kentucky's leading anti-abortion rights voice, who says she's lobbying lawmakers to restrict abortion pills by mail.

What are we going to do with the illegal trafficking of these drugs, these abortion, life terminating drugs that are that are already offensive to the laws of Kentucky?

But moving up on the schedule first and then not to the degree as a narcotic, but moving down the schedule so it's recognized on the schedule, which is allowable by the state.

State has a purview to be able to do that.

Lawmakers could do that.

And then treating it and moving it up as covenant like on the trafficking.

Kentucky Right to Life opposes the medical privacy bill.

So House Bill 23 is just sort of a slap in the face knowing that that legislation is coming forward on trafficking and bringing those drugs into the state.

Policy makers will hammer out this debate this session.

So what's legal now?

An abortion law expert says nationally, women have not face prosecution for out-of-state abortions.

Some doctors have been indicted, but never women.

There would be enormous defenses, for someone if a state tried to prosecute them, for instance.

One of them being that we, you know, our federal Constitution guarantees a right to travel.

Male abortion pills are a bit different.

Greer Donnelly says every month, nearly 15,000 abortion medications are sent to people living under an abortion ban.

A very small number have went to jail.

So and there are many laws that kind of criminalize, abortion in a state that bans it.

For the most part, they have exceptions that, you know, are supposed to protect the pregnant person who gets the abortion.

However, we are seeing a rise.

You know, this has happened for a long time, even before Dobbs.

But we're seeing a rise of state prosecutors who are politically motivated to charge for abortion crimes using old statutes that have nothing to do with abortion, to try to target and criminalize people.

As for federal medical privacy protections, Greer Donnelly says HIPAA does not bar health care providers from handing personal information to law enforcement, and that providers are often the ones calling police in these rare, high profile cases.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm June Lefler.

Thank you June Kate requested comment from Attorney General Russell Coleman's office for this story.

His office has not responded.