The new regulations on medication abortion are definitely bad law and bad medicine. But on a cultural level, how much of a woman's decision re: whether or not to get an abortion -- medication or otherwise -- is influenced by societal shame and stigma surrounding the procedure?
The Associated Press reports that a federal judge ordered Kansas "to immediately resume funding a Planned Parenthood chapter on the same quarterly schedule that existed before a new state law stripped it of all federal funding for non-abortion services."
A federal judge today found that the Texas "sonogram law" violates the First Amendment and blocked enforcement of important provisions of the statute. This law would have forced women seeking to terminate a pregnancy to undergo a medically unnecessary and intrusive transvaginal sonogram.
It's not often that I agree with Michael Gerson, the conservative former speech writer for President George H.W. Bush, advocate for abstinence-only policies in U.S. global AIDS programs, and columnist for the Washington Post. Today, however, I am in near full-agreement with him on why a pro-choice position on a public health intervention is also pro-life in the real sense.
