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 1st 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.