2025-Q1 2026: Message to Our Supporters
Thank you for your partnership during this challenging time for abortion access and personal freedom in Kentucky. Because of you, we continue to elevate the voices of physicians, medical students & nurses. Patients' stories are being heard, and public understanding continues to grow.
THE SITUATION
Uncertainty Continues
Across Kentucky, physicians still face the threat of felony charges and loss of licensure for providing essential medical care. Hospitals must navigate vague and inconsistent laws that create hesitation precisely when timely medical decisions matter most.
Patients are being endangered by delayed or denied care — Healthcare systems are strained by legal uncertainty — Physicians are leaving Kentucky.
Kentucky Is Losing the Next Generation of Physicians
The consequences of Kentucky's abortion bans extend beyond today's practitioners — they are reshaping the state's medical future. Medical students are choosing residencies in other states, unwilling to compromise their training in environments where standard care is legally restricted, and unwilling to begin building their families under laws that threaten their own health and safety.
The result is a direct transfer of value: Kentucky invests in medical education, and other states reap the benefit. This pipeline loss compounds existing physician shortages in both rural and metropolitan communities. And this is not hypothetical — communities across the state, urban and rural alike, are actively struggling to recruit physicians, with little success.
OUR WORK
A Growing Medical Coalition
On Feb. 19, 2026, for the third year in a row, physicians and healthcare providers + faith leaders and a patient gathered at the Capitol in a powerful show of unity. More than 600 physicians and allied health professionals—a significant increase from last year—signed an open letter calling on lawmakers to repeal Kentucky's abortion bans.
Read and share — our goal is 1,000 signatures before the 2027 press conference.
www.kyrff.com/health-professionals
View the 2026 press conference at the Kentucky Capital and a selection of media coverage here:
One of the most powerful moments - A patient shared her story after nearly losing her life due to Kentucky's abortion ban. She is the second speaker.
2025–2027 Media Campaign
• October 2025: physicians, nurses, medical students, faith leaders, and patients recorded on-camera interviews documenting the harms of the abortion bans.
• 12 videos are currently streaming and amplified on media platforms (Meta FB & IG, YouTube, Programmatic pre-roll, CTV/OTT) with a sustained media campaign continuing through 2027. Physician, patient, and faith leader video content drove meaningful completion rates.
Our First Quarter Campaign Accomplished:
555K people reached • 2.5M impressions • 131K engagements
View three of the videos here — a Kentucky medical student, an OB-GYN, a faith leader.
View a Kentucky Couple’s story here.
Impact Highlights
Changing Public Understanding
KYRFF supported the placement of three important opinion pieces this period, elevating physician and medical student voices in the public conversation.
→ Seeking Justice: Why Faith Should Not Dictate Medical Care — Lexington Herald Leader
→ I Can't Be the OB-GYN I Aspire to Be in an Abortion Ban State — MedPage Today & Courier Journal
→ House Bill 90 Adds Confusion on Exceptions — Lexington Herald Leader
Practicing Medicine Under Legal Threat
Healthcare professionals and faith leaders across the state continue to share the realities they face every day.
"Nurses are forced to stand by, helpless, as our patients suffer, knowing that medically necessary interventions are being withheld."
Jenn Stedman | Kentucky Nurse
"My first instinct as a physician has always been: what do I need to do to provide the best possible care? Now, a second question enters my mind — what am I legally allowed to do?"
Dr. Alecia Fields | Kentucky OB-GYN
"Physicians are filled with anxiety and moral distress. This is the stress of understanding the medical care that needs to be delivered but not being able to act on it. That is contrary to our core as physicians."
Dr. Tanya Franklin | Kentucky OB-GYN
"People of faith support bodily autonomy and access to reproductive health care, including medically safe abortions. Surveys show most religious groups back reproductive freedom."
Rev. Amy Armstrong | Kentucky Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
Thank you for being alongside us – we continue this work together
Ona Bass Marshall & Dr. Ernest Marshall
Founders, The Kentucky Reproductive Freedom Fund