FRANKFORT — Abortions at two Kentucky clinics decreased dramatically after Kentucky's “informed consent” law took effect 11 months ago, the clinics' administrator said Wednesday.

        Legislation approved by a Senate committee Wednesday might drive the numbers even lower, supporters of legal abortion said.

        There were 3,057 abortions performed last year, down from 3,828 the year before, at EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville, Executive Director Dona Wells said.

        About a third of the year's total — 1,015 — occurred in the first quarter of 2001.

        Then the law took effect, and abortions declined to 714 in the second quarter, Ms. Wells told the Health and Welfare Committee.

        There were audible gasps from the audience, which included abortion opponents and supporters, then a smattering of applause when Ms. Wells announced the decrease in abortions.

        “It became very clear to us that women were being precluded” from getting abortions, she said.

        She said in an interview afterward that abortions also declined at her second location, EMW Women's Clinic in Lexington, which is not licensed for use of general anesthesia and deals only in first-trimester abortions.

        Ms. Wells said she did not have figures for Lexington, but the rate of decline was comparable to that in Louisville.

        At issue was a bill by Sen. Katie Stine, R-Fort Thomas, to add a restriction to the 1998 law that requires a woman to have counseling before getting an abortion.

        The Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure ruled in October that counseling could be done by telephone. Ms. Stine's bill would require a face-to-face meeting.

        “Over the phone is not good enough,” Ms. Stine said. That “could be interpreted as a prerecorded message.”

        Critics of the bill said the intent is to require women to make time-consuming, perhaps expensive, trips to Louisville and Lexington, the only cities in Kentucky with abortion clinics.

        The same committee approved a bill to let pharmacists freely decline to fill prescriptions to which they have a moral objection.

        The sponsor, Sen. Jack Westwood, said pharmacists “can be harassed or discriminated against” for refusing to dispense medications that could cause abortions.

        An obstetrician-gynecologist who opposed the bill, Dr. Kimberly Alumbaugh of Louisville, said pharmacists in extreme cases could refuse to dispense chemotherapy drugs to pregnant women or any kind of contraceptive.

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