Activist judge strikes down a law requiring ultrasound before abortion
As reported by Washington Post:
An Oklahoma judge decided Tuesday that doctors do not need to perform ultrasounds and offer women detailed information about the tests before performing abortions, striking down the strictest such law in the country.
Oklahoma County District Judge Vicki L. Robertson ruled that the 2008 law, which included other abortion-related provisions, violated a state constitutional provision that requires laws to address only one subject.
Thirteen states regulate the provision of ultrasounds by abortion providers, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health think tank. The provisions have been pushed by abortion opponents as a means of deterring women from having the procedures.
Not knowing the Oklahoma constitution, I'll defer to the judge regarding this "single subject" rule. But, at least the way it's presented in the article, it doesn't sound like the judge is, as is her obligation, simply applying the law as it must be applied, regardless of whether it passes the common sense test or the public weal. She sounds gleeful that she found this technicality which allows her to strike down a law that she disagrees with.
Assuming that constitutional technicality issue is valid, I'm not sure if I should be wishing that this decision gets overturned. But I do hope that the lawmakers re-introduce the bill to conform to the rules, because it sounds like a really good idea: let the mother see her child before she decides to kill him/her; the only pressure is that the mother sees her unborn child, not whether she should kill it or not, and the question is between her, her doctor, and God, no one else (unfortunately the baby can't speak yet).
And yet, the anti-life groups pretend that this is somehow privacy issue:
A Tulsa clinic run by Nova Health Systems, represented by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, filed a lawsuit charging that the law not only violated the state Constitution's "single-subject" rule but also infringed on a woman's right to privacy, violated her dignity and endangered her health.
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Arizona and Florida require ultrasounds for abortions after the first trimester; Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama mandate ultrasounds for first-trimester abortions. The Guttmacher Institute says that because an ultrasound is not considered medically necessary in the first trimester, when nearly 90 percent of abortions occur, it views such laws as "a veiled attempt to personify the fetus and dissuade a woman from obtaining an abortion."
Er, "personify the fetus"? You cannot personify, outside literature, something that isn't already a person. That's why animal rights movement, which does try to personify a non-sentient being, hasn't gained traction with the general population. Most reasonable people know a person when they see one, and they also know when they are being fed B.S. about lower beings.
If a fetus is truly a non-person, no amount of ultrasound images or doctors' explanations would force a mother to think of that fetus as a person, the way no amount of sophistry can convince an adult that a baby doll is a person, even though it can "speak" and make various noises.
Most of the time, when unnecessary abortions of convenience are performed, the fact is that the mother is in denial. She is in denial that she has been entrusted with the life of a sentient being and, so far as she is able, bears the duty to protect that life. If more information, provided by modern instruments and the doctor's commentary, can help her see past her denial, what's wrong with that?
On the other hand, the law does not require that she see past her denial. The only thing it does, at least the way it seems to me, is that it makes it abundantly clear to God that her decision to terminate her baby was not born of ignorance and haste—and that her act was a willful act of destruction. But then, these anti-life groups don't believe in God anyway, so what are they really afraid of?