Sarah Ladd, Kentucky Lantern

If you or someone you know has experienced domestic violence, call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. You can also contact any of Kentucky’s 15 domestic violence programs.

This story also discusses suicide. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 988.

Georgia Hensley feels like she’s been “screaming in a padded room” for too long about gaps in the way Kentucky protects survivors of domestic and intimate partner violence. ...

This story mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

Calling it a “dangerous practice,” Gov. Andy Beshear signed an executive order Wednesday that bans conversion therapy on minors in Kentucky.

Speaking in Frankfort, Beshear said such attempts to alter a young person’s gender expression or sexual attractions have “no basis in medicine” — a view supported by experts in medicine and mental health. ...

Kentucky’s Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission voted in favor of spending $3.6 million over the next two years on a three-part addiction prevention campaign geared toward youth proposed by Attorney General Russell Coleman Tuesday.

The funds that the commission is in charge of distributing, which come from legal settlements with drug companies, “represent the shared pain of families across this commonwealth,” Coleman said Tuesday.

He asked the commission for permission to spend a slice of this “blood money” to reach young people across Kentucky between the ages of 13 and 26. No members voted against his request, and no one abstained. The money will be split into $1.8 million each year. ...

A conservative legal group has filed a brief on behalf of a former Kentucky county clerk that it says could lead to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Kim Davis, then the Rowan County clerk, made national headlines in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to several same-sex couples based on her religious beliefs.

Liberty Counsel, based in Orlando, Florida, and labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed the brief Monday with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, according to a news release from Liberty Counsel and first reported by Jezebel. ...

FRANKFORT — A Taylor Swift ticket giveaway worth thousands of dollars and aimed at incentivizing more people to donate blood worked, Kentucky Blood Center donor numbers show.

From May 28 through June 29, anyone who donated at any Kentucky Blood Center location was entered to win two Eras Tour tickets for Nov. 3 in Indianapolis.

The anatomy of Kentucky’s blood supply, and why more need to donate

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