5th Circuit Court Says Sonogram Law is Constitutional

A 3-judge panel of the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today, only 6 days after hearing arguments, that the Texas Sonogram Law, a personally invasive law with roots in religious doctrine, does not violate a physician’s constitutional right of free speech.

The court, in essence, rubberstamped an out-of-control state legislature that sought to legislate religious doctrine into the doctor’s office.

In truth, most abortions are accompanied by a sonogram simply to help the doctor ensure the safety of the abortion. Look before you leap, in other words. So this law is not a law that encourages proper medical procedures, sonograms are prescribed as a pre-abortion procedure. What this law requires is a state-mandated speech that the physician must perform. A speech that has no medical merit at all. A speech that has, as its one and only purpose, to discourage a woman from going through with the abortion.

Not because of any medical reason. But because of the religious doctrine that life begins at conception. A completely unproved religious doctrine.

Clearly, the Court was influenced by rightist religious dogma that goes far beyond its purview as a secular body.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, an organization that was in the lead to oppose this law, is looking at its options that include asking the entire Court to rule on the case, and also a run at the Supreme Court.

Frankly, I don’t see how this case doesn’t make it all the way to SCOTUS. One way or another, it will end up there.

You know, if everyone would just agree to stop having heterosexual sex with each other, we can have this whole problem licked.

(Just kidding)

Two Down and One To Go

I need a hat trick. This past year the Texas Legislature passed some pretty bad legislation. Voter ID, of course, which I discussed previously, The Sonogram Law, also discussed previously, requires that women who seek an abortion, for any reason, have a sonogram done so they can be convinced one last time not to have the procedure done – a law so invasive on several levels that it greatly offends those who are lovers of liberty. And then there was the decennial redistricting where district boundaries were heavily gerrymandered to exclude minorities from having representation in the state house and in congress.

Well, as mentioned previously, enforcement of the Sonogram Law was stayed by Judge Sam Sparks in federal district court, thus eliminating that law that Rick Perry requested as “emergency legislation.” And now, today, we see that the Department of Justice has filed in court a lawsuit that challenges the way the legislature redrew state house and congressional district boundaries, saying that it was done specifically to discriminate against minority voters – voters who usually vote Democratic.

From Think Progress:

“The Department of Justice weighed in today on the controversial Texas redistricting map that Gov. Rick Perry signed in May and civil rights groups argue intentionally weakens the Latino vote to benefit Republicans. The DOJ signaled their concern that the map discriminates against minorities and therefore violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

That’s two.

Now I am looking for a hat trick. I have been told that September 23^rd is a date that is important for the DOJ to challenge the Voter ID Law, arguably the harshest law ever passed anywhere recently that attacks one’s ability to vote in an election. Really. This law makes Jim Crow Laws look like decent treatment in that we know it is all about limiting Democrats’ ability to vote, but its stated purpose is to prevent foreign nationals from voting, a non-existent problem.

I’ve no idea what will occur on the 23^rd. It could only boil down to posing additional questions to the state, thus postponing a filing challenging the law as yet another VRA violation.

A filing that seems all but inevitable.

So that’s the three-fer I am hoping for.

But on the other hand, why not go for broke? Why not challenge the constitutionality of yet another bad law passed by the legislature this year? Why not challenge the constitutionality of the biennial budget? This is a budget, passed by a Republican-dominated state legislature that fails a constitutional requirement that public education be fully funded. With an anticipated rise in enrollment, the legislature passed a law that did not cover new students, or old ones for that matter.

So in actuality, I want a four-fer.

Sonogram Law Gets a Stay

Federal District Judge Sam Sparks, who first appeared on my radar when he famously told former Congressman Tom DeLay to “run like a rabbit” in his bid to exit his 2006 election after having won in his party’s primary, has ruled that the recently passed sonogram law is unconstitutional.

It violates the 1^st Amendment.

It seems that not only is it unconstitutional for someone’s speech be regulated by what a government entity thinks is inappropriate or wrong, it is also unconstitutional for a government entity to force an individual to say something, particularly if they are in opposition to what they are saying.

Cuts both ways.

The irony is that the sonogram law, a law that is invasive and intrusive on so many levels, was ruled unconstitutional not because it invaded a woman’s personal privacy as well as her corporeal body, but because it invaded a doctor’s right not to say what the state of Texas demanded them to say, or face a fine and loss of license.

And a woman’s right not to have to listen to what the doctor was saying.

Oh, and by the way, Presidential candidate Rick Perry, who ordered that the sonogram law be expedited by the legislature as an emergency issue, and State Senator Dan Patrick, who wrote this heinous, invasive, intrusive law that is guilty, guilty, guilty of Republican/Tea Party overreach, serenely predicted that the decision will be overturned when Attorney General Greg Abbott appeals the ruling.

Showmanship. All showmanship.

This law is as dead as Marley’s ghost.

Pre-Abortion Sonogram Law Challenged in Federal Court

The Center for Reproductive Rights just filed a lawsuit in federal court in Austin on behalf of abortion providers, challenging the legality of the recently passed oppressive Sonogram Law. It will be remembered that the Sonogram Law requires all women seeking an abortion in Texas must undergo a sonogram 24 hours before her scheduled abortion (or 2 hours before the abortion if she lives 100 or more miles away from the abortion service provider).

I have been expecting this but I was surprised at their angle of attack, something that I doubt the lawyers and other non-medical people in the Legislature probably didn’t think about.

You see, I would have gone at this law head-on. It is oppressive, invasive and an unwarranted intrusion on the privacy of a human being. It is Big Government writ large fueled by evangelical religious fervor.

It is so obvious.

But no, they don’t attack it that way. Remember the lawsuit was filed on behalf of abortion service providers: medical doctors and medical clinics. Here is their angle of attack.

From the Austin American-Statesman:

“The Act profoundly intrudes on the practice of medicine, forces physicians to deliver ideological speech to patients, and treats women as less than fully competent adults,” the lawsuit says.”

“Under the law, signed May 19 by Gov. Rick Perry, a woman cannot decline to hear the sonogram description, though she may opt out of viewing sonogram images or hearing the fetal heartbeat.”

“‘The Act will force physicians to violate basic standards of medical ethics by compelling them to disregard the wishes of patients who do not want to receive this information,’ the lawsuit said.”

Brilliant.