http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/21/national/main2593092.shtml(CBS/AP) With calls of emotional blackmail from opponents, a measure requiring women seeking abortions to first review ultrasound images of their fetuses advanced Wednesday in the South Carolina Legislature.
The legislation, supported by Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, easily passed 91-23 after lawmakers defeated amendments exempting rape or incest. The House must approve the bill again in a routine vote before it goes to the Senate, where its sponsor expects it to pass.
Some states make ultrasound images available to women before an abortion, but South Carolina would be alone in requiring women to view the pictures.
Delleney is the main sponsor of the amendment. There is already a South Carolina law requiring women to review abortion information and undergo a waiting period. Still, Delleney believes women need more information to make a final decision, reports CBS affiliate WLTX-TV in Columbia, S.C.
There's an easy remedy for this one. In the US, it's called "the First Amendment". Freedom of speech includes freedom to receive information, which includes freedom not to receive information, just as freedom to speak includes freedom not to speak.
No government is entitled to force anyone to see anything s/he chooses not to see. Not without a constitutionally legitimate justification, and there just ain't one here.
Supporters hope women would change their minds after seeing an ultrasound and choose instead to keep the child or offer it for adoption.
"I'm just trying to save lives and protect people from regret and inform women with the most accurate non-judgmental information that can be provided," Rep. Greg Delleney, R-Chester, said.
doesn't even begin to constitute justification for this gross interference in one of the fundamental rights in the US Constitution.
Blackmun J. in Roe v. Wade:
(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician.
(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.
Most abortions to which the S.C. proposal relates are first-trimester. The rule in the first trimester is: the state is entitled to piss off. Under the "privacy" principles that Roe is based on, the state has no role to play in respect of abortions at this stage, other than the role it would play in respect of any medical/surgical treatment. (Licensing doctors and regulating facilities, e.g.)
In the second trimester, the state is entitled to regulate "in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health". It's not at all clear what the Court had in mind there (what more is needed but licensing professionals and regulating facilities?), but no one qualified to give an opinion about what is related to a woman's health -- i.e. doctors -- would ever include "being forced to view an ultrasound" in that category.
I'm sometimes gobsmacked. If a law like this, or like a zillion other laws in the US, were ever passed in Canada, thousands of people in Canada would be filing constitutional challeges in their local courts the next day. Of course, true, no one here would propose it and seriously expect it to get anywhere in the first place.
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