By Dave Andrusko
Another good piece of news about Texas’s new sonogram law. Three days after lifting U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks’ temporary injunction, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for immediate enforcement of H.B. 15.
This morning the panel agreed to a request by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to cut short a three-week waiting period between a ruling and its implementation.
The appeals court order means the Texas Department of State Health Services is free to issue rules for compliance and to prosecute abortionists who do not obey it.
As explained in Tuesday’s opinion written by Chief Judge Edith Jones, H.B. 15 is intended to “strengthen the informed consent of women who chose to undergo abortions.” The abortionist is required to perform and display a sonogram of the unborn child, make audible the baby’s heartbeat for the mother to hear, and explain to her the results of each procedure. In most cases, should the mother still wish to abort, she must wait 24 hours.
Associated Press reporter Chris Tomlinson wrote that the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR)—the pro-abortion law firm that filed the law suit for the abortionists—had no immediate comment. Likewise, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office “referred questions about enforcing the law to State Health Services, which did not immediately return requests for comment.”
Judge Sparks agreed with the CRR’s position that the free speech rights of abortionists had been abridged by H.B. 15, signed into law by pro-life Gov. Rick Perry, because it “compelled speech.”
The panel pointedly disagreed. Jones noted that the same kind of arguments were offered up (and rejected) by the Eighth Circuit following the 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey decision.
Referring to Casey specifically, Jones noted that the plurality opinion concluded that “’the giving of truthful, nonmisleading information’ which is ‘relevant…to the decision’ did not impose an undue burden on the woman’s right to an abortion.’”
Jones added, “’Relevant’ informed consent may entail not only the physical and psychological risks to the expectant mother facing this ‘difficult moral decision,’ but also the state’s legitimate interests in ‘protecting the potential life within her.’”
Next week Sparks will hear oral arguments in the case. Whichever way he rules, no doubt the losing party will appeal.
Mary Spaulding Balch, NRLC Director of State Legislation, was pleased by the panel’s decision to expedite matters.
“And when this law goes into effect,” she told NRL News Today, “it will be one of the strongest ultrasound laws in the country.”
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