The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Path is cleared for Kentucky’s ultrasound law
The Supreme Court on Monday said it would not hear a challenge to a Kentucky law that requires doctors performing abortions to display fetal ultrasounds and to describe the images to women seeking the procedure. The court’s action means the law will go into effect.
What did the Supreme Court say?
As is its custom, the court gave no reasons for turning down the appeal in the case. There were no noted dissents.
What was the case about?
The case was brought by the only licensed abortion clinic in the state and three doctors who work there. They challenged a 2017 law that requires doctors to give a detailed description of fetal ultrasound images, including “the presence of external members and internal organs.” Doctors are also required to make the fetal heartbeat audible if they can.
This ordinarily takes place, according to the challengers’ petition seeking review, while the woman is on the examination table. The law specifies that women may avert their eyes and ask that the volume of the audio of the heartbeat be turned down or off.
The challengers argued that forcing doctors to participate violated their First Amendment rights.
What were the previous rulings?
In federal court: A federal trial judge agreed with the challengers, saying the law was “designed to convey the state’s ideological, anti-abortion message.”
On appeal: The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld the law. It was, the court said, an ordinary regulation of medical professionals to ensure that their patients gave informed consent before undergoing abortions. The law “does not violate a doctor’s right to free speech under the First Amendment,” Judge John K. Bush wrote for the majority.
In dissent, Judge Bernice Bouie Donald said the state “has co-opted physicians’ examining tables, their probing instruments and their voices in order to espouse a political message, without regard to the health of the patient or the judgment of the physician.”