Today, the Supreme Court declined an appeal challenging a Kentucky law that forces doctors to show and describe ultrasound images before performing an abortion—even if patients avert their eyes or ask the doctor to stop. In this emergency episode of Boom! Lawyered, Jessica Mason Pieklo and Imani Gandy explain what this means for the First Amendment and abortion rights in Kentucky and around the country.
The Democratic candidate criticized his Republican counterpart for suggesting that “she wants to take government out of everyone’s life” even though she had sponsored an “invasive ultrasound bill" as a state senator.
The state health department doesn't screen the providers, which "gives the false impression that this is a vetted list …when it’s actually not," as Hannah Brass Greer, Idaho legislative director of Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest and Hawaii, told Rewire.
A return to data should aid in dismantling other laws ungrounded in any real facts, such as Texas’ onerous "informed consent” law—HB 15—which forces women to get an ultrasound that they may neither need nor afford, and which imposes a 24-hour waiting period.
The official digest language for the law says that pregnant patients considering an abortion “must be given the opportunity to view the fetal ultrasound imaging and hear the auscultation of the fetal heart tone” at least 18 hours before an abortion.
“Women of color and immigrant women already face significant obstacles to obtaining health care," Victoria Gómez Betancourt, spokesperson for the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, said at a news conference. "This means that any extra hoops and hurdles created by these bills will impact already marginalized women most of all."
![[Photo: An illustrated collage of Utah Republican lawmakers overlayed on top of the word 'UTAH.']](https://rewirenewsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/utah-republicans-800x533.jpg)
