FRANKFORT, Ky. — A Republican-backed bill touted as an attempt to bring clarity to Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban was vetoed Tuesday by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who said it would do the opposite by undermining the judgment of doctors while further imperiling the lives of pregnant women in emergency situations.

Beshear, an abortion-rights supporter who is seen as a potential candidate for the White House in 2028, followed the advice of abortion-rights supporters who urged the governor to reject the measure.

Kentucky’s GOP supermajority legislature will have a chance to override Beshear’s veto when lawmakers reconvene Thursday for the final two days of this year’s 30-day session.

The bill’s supporters said it’s meant to offer clarity to doctors now fearful of breaking Kentucky law for terminating pregnancies while treating expectant mothers with grave complications. Delving into potential life-or-death situations, the bill aims to provide clear guidelines for doctors in such emergencies while maintaining Kentucky’s strict prohibitions against abortion, supporters said.

“Although supporters of House Bill 90 claim it protects pregnant women and clarifies abortion law in Kentucky, it actually does the opposite,” Beshear said in his veto message Tuesday evening.

The governor said the bill would block access to health care and put the lives of women facing crisis pregnancies at even more risk.

Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban has been in place since a so-called trigger law took effect when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The Bluegrass State bans abortions except when carried out to save a mother’s life. Efforts to add exceptions for cases of rape or incest or when pregnancies are nonviable have made no headway in Kentucky’s legislature.

The new legislation would create a list of emergency situations in which abortions could be done to save the mother’s life, but Beshear said it was flawed.

“The bill is silent on any other emergency situations,” the governor said in his message. “No one, including legislators, can possibly create an exhaustive list of emergency situations that may occur in a hospital or medical facility. Gaps in the law are literally a matter of life and death.”

A House Republican spokeswoman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to enforce abortion bans, exceptions have been a legal and political battleground.

The Kentucky bill says doctors exercising reasonable medical judgment may take action “separating a pregnant woman from her unborn child” in such cases as: lifesaving miscarriage management; emergency intervention for sepsis and hemorrhaging; procedures necessary to prevent the death or substantial risk of death of the pregnant woman; removal of an ectopic pregnancy; treatment of a molar pregnancy.

“It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list but it is the most common issues that physicians and mothers, who are facing a crisis pregnancy, are facing,” Republican state Rep. Kimberly Poore Moser said during a House debate on the measure.

In touting the bill, GOP state Rep. Jason Nemes said it would ensure that women “facing life-threatening situations receive timely, appropriate medical care, and gives providers the legal certainty they need to act decisively.”

Beshear faulted the bill for not containing language used by medical professionals.

“It also substitutes a physician’s best clinical judgment with an ambiguous, unworkable ‘reasonable medical judgment’ standard that will make doctors hesitant to provide life-saving care for fear someone other than the treating doctor, like a prosecutor or a court, may after the fact find it ‘unreasonable,’” Beshear said. “These barriers to treatment could delay access to evidence-based and lifesaving care.”

Addia Wuchner, executive director of Kentucky Right to Life, was among the bill’s advocates, telling a legislative panel: “This is medical care that needs to take place in the commonwealth.”

David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, a socially conservative group, said the veto showed that Beshear is a “mouthpiece” for abortion-rights groups. Walls called it “pro-mom and pro-baby” bill meant to add clarity to Kentucky law to protect maternal health.

Abortion-rights supporter Tamarra Wieder, Kentucky State director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, said Beshear “put patients over politics” with his veto.

“HB 90 was never about clarity or compassion,” she said in a statement. “It ignored medical standards, used anti-abortion rhetoric like ‘maternal-fetal separation’ and would have forced doctors to delay care during medical emergencies.”

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Taylor Cagnacci moved from California to Tennessee with hopes of starting a new chapter in a state that touts a low cost of living and natural beauty.

But she’s infuriated by Tennessee’s meager social services, which leave her and many other moms struggling in a state where abortion is banned with limited exceptions.

“I was going to have my child no matter what, but for other women, that’s kind of a crappy situation that they put you in,” said Cagnacci, a 29-year-old Kingsport mom who relies on Medicaid and a federally funded nutrition program. “You have to have your child. But where’s the assistance afterward?”

Tennessee has a porous safety net for mothers and young children, recent research and an analysis by The Associated Press found. It’s unknown how many women in the state have given birth because they didn’t have access to abortion, but it is clear that from the time a Tennessee woman gets pregnant, she faces greater obstacles to a healthy pregnancy, a healthy child and a financially stable family than the average American mom.

Like other states with strict abortion bans, Tennesseans of childbearing age are more likely to live in maternal care deserts and face overall doctor shortages. Women, infants and children are less likely to be enrolled in a government nutrition program known as WIC. And Tennessee is one of only 10 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid to a greater share of low-income families.

“It’s survival, every day,” said Janie Busbee, founder of Mother to Mother, a Nashville-based nonprofit providing baby supplies for low-income moms. “If we took some of that stress off of them, then maybe they’d have time to dream.”

GOP state leaders in Tennessee and other states that banned abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 argue that they are bolstering services for families.

Tennessee boosted its Medicaid coverage for mothers in 2022 from 60 days postpartum to a year, which allowed an additional 3,000 moms to use the program each year.

The state also raised the Medicaid income limit for parents to the poverty level — nearly $26,000 for a family of three — and offers recipients 100 free diapers a month for babies under two. According to the governor’s office, these changes have resulted in thousands of new parents accessing government services.

“Pro-life is much more than defending the lives of the unborn,” Republican Gov. Bill Lee said in his 2023 annual address to lawmakers and echoed more recently on social media. “This is not a matter of politics. This is about human dignity.”

Yet, nonprofit leaders and mothers told the AP there are still significant gaps in the safety net.

Anika Chillis, a 39-year-old single mom in Memphis, has Medicaid, WIC and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps). While she’s deeply grateful for the help, she said it also can disappear — like when she temporarily lost WIC.

“It’s hard,” she said, sitting on a park bench as her 2-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter played nearby. “Groceries are constantly going up.” And being a single mom “makes it doubly hard on you.”

Tennessee fared poorly at WIC enrollment, Medicaid, having enough maternal care and requirements for paid family and medical leave, an October study found.

Other states with similarly restrictive abortion laws — such as Idaho, Alabama, Missouri, Georgia and Mississippi — ranked poorly on numerous measures, too. Researchers said restrictive states had a slightly higher average birth rate and a much lower average abortion rate than the least restrictive states.

“In general, these states that restrict abortion are the more fiscally conservative, the more socially conservative states,” said Dr. Nigel Madden, lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The Republican supermajority in the Tennessee legislature has long rebuffed efforts to expand Medicaid to people earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level — about $35,600 for a family of three. And TennCare faces criticism already, with a federal judge ruling earlier this year that the state unlawfully terminated coverage for thousands of families and had a “lethargic” response to nearly 250,000 children losing coverage because of paperwork problems caused by the state.

DiJuana Davis, 44, was among the plaintiffs. In 2019, the Nashville resident was supposed to have surgery to prevent pregnancy and ease her chronic anemia. Days before the procedure, she was informed her Medicaid coverage had been cut off and the hospital was canceling.

She later found out her renewal paperwork went to the wrong address, an error that left her uninsured for two months — during which she became pregnant and developed preeclampsia. Doctors induced labor to save her life, and her son was born prematurely.

“The system is broken,” she said, “and it needs to be fixed.”

More than 3% of the 83,000 babies born in Tennessee in 2023 had mothers who didn’t receive prenatal care. Only seven states had a higher share, according to an AP analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

After birth, doctor shortages impede ongoing care. Around a third of Tennesseans live in a primary care shortage area — a greater share than in all but 10 other states — according to an AP analysis of data from the Census Bureau and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Moms described several aid programs as frustrating to navigate. Chillis was on WIC for several months after her son was born, but then went without because of mistake during the renewal process — eventually getting it restored with help from the nonprofit Tennessee Justice Center.

Chillis credits a nonprofit preschool provider with linking her to aid programs in the first place: “I don’t see a lot of advertisements about, you know, how you can join this program or go get this” service, she said. “People just don’t have the knowledge.”

Cagnacci, who is pregnant and has a 1-year-old, said she was on SNAP for a while but missed an appointment and was unclear about the steps after that. The process to get recertified was “such a headache” that she’s going without it.

“I just felt like it was purposely being made difficult so that I would just give up,” she said.

Women with young children in states where abortion is banned or limited to early weeks of pregnancy said it can be tough to get social services there, according to a survey by the health policy research organization KFF. Nearly half said it’s difficult for women in their state to get food stamps, for example, compared with 3 in 10 in states where abortion is generally available.

“People who claim to be pro-life, who advocated for these abortion bans, often suggest that these policies are designed to protect children, women and families,” said Madden, the researcher. But the weakness of the safety net shows “the hypocrisy of that argument.”

Tennessee’s new diaper program shows the deep political divisions surrounding aid programs. The Republican governor described it as an effort to strengthen families while Democratic state Sen. London Lamar said GOP leaders are “trying to put a little bow on an abortion ban.” And GOP state Sen. Mark Pody recently told the right-leaning news website Tennessee Conservative that “it is not the state’s responsibility to have a diaper for every single baby” and floated the possibility of cutting the program.

Of Tennessee’s 2.8 million households, 30% earn above the poverty level but not enough to afford the basic cost of living in their counties, according to a recent report. Often, they don’t qualify for government help.

“Some are working three jobs and still can’t survive,” said Busbee, of Mother to Mother.

A fragmented patchwork of charities can help, but they don’t cover the entire state. The Nashville Diaper Connection, for example, serves 30 counties, working with partners to provide 50 diapers a month, mostly to working families who make a bit too much for Medicaid. Other nonprofits are hindered in helping by government agencies’ income rules. And most charities are constrained by the ebb and flow of donations.

Nonprofit leaders fear their job may get harder with a new administration in Washington and a GOP-controlled Congress. Republicans could seek significant changes to federal assistance programs they’ve long criticized, like Medicaid and food stamps.

“We’ve been through four years of a Trump administration, and the goal under the Trump administration was to cut social services,” said Signe Anderson, the justice center’s senior director of nutrition advocacy. “I’m concerned … for families in Tennessee and across the country.”

___

Kruesi reported from Nashville, Tennessee. AP data journalists Kasturi Pananjady and Nicky Forster contributed to this report.

——

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.