Date: 09-28-2017
A Kentucky law requiring doctors who conduct abortions to first perform ultrasounds and describe the image to the patient violates the First Amendment rights of those physicians, according to a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge David Hale ruled Wednesday in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union’s challenge to the law, made on behalf of the state’s sole abortion provider, EMW Women’s Surgical Center, and barred the state from enforcing it.
“This is a vindication of the rights of Kentucky women and their physicians, and it marks a significant victory against the General Assembly’s overreach into the area of reproductive healthcare,” William Sharp, the legal director of the ACLU of Kentucky, wrote in a news release.
House Bill 2, which was later signed into law, mandates that medical professionals perform an ultrasound on a woman and simultaneously explain what it is depicting before the woman provides consent for an abortion. Doctors also have to display the images and, if possible, let the woman listen to the fetal heartbeat.
Hale writes in his opinion, issued late Wednesday, that the law “appears to inflict psychological harm on abortion patients.”
“Requiring physicians to force upon their patients the information mandated by H.B. 2 has more potential to harm the psychological well-being of the patient than to further the legitimate interests of the Commonwealth,” he writes.
At a March hearing on the case, lawyer M. Stephen Pitt, who represented the Cabinet for Health and family Services, the state agency that oversees abortion clinics, said the law was meant to protect women who might regret abortions or may not fully understand the procedure.
It might prompt a woman to reconsider an abortion by thinking “Gosh, there’s a living human being inside me. Maybe I don’t want to do this,” Pitt said at the time.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Matt Bevin did not immediately return a request for comment sent around 10:15 p.m. Wednesday night.
Hale wrote in his opinion that evidence shows it is EMW Surgical Center’s practice, as well as the nationwide standard, “to offer women the opportunity” to see an ultrasound, hear its description or hear the fetal heartbeat.
“There is no evidence that physicians in Kentucky were denying women this information prior to the enactment of H.B. 2,” he wrote.
Dr. Tanya Franklin, a physician who provides abortions in Louisville, testified in March that none of her patients had decided against having an abortion since the ultrasound law took effect in January.
State law already requires counseling 24 hours in advance of an abortion and the EMW clinic discusses alternatives, like adoption, and tries to make sure no one is pressuring the patient to get an abortion, Franklin said.
Instead, she said, the law has been very upsetting for her patients.
“Some of them are crying, some of them are sobbing, some of them are defeated and desperate,” Franklin testified before Hale in March.
The ultrasound law is one of two abortion bill the legislature passed during its first week this year after Republicans took control of the House, giving the GOP control of both the House and Senate and a chance to pass abortion restriction measures long sought by the party.
A second measure, also signed into law by Bevin, bans abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy.
By Darcy Costello
The Courier-Journal
