U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles ruled yesterday that, at least for now, doctors will not have to perform an intrusive dog-and-pony show before performing abortions. Eagles, however, did leave one of the more egregious parts of the abortion-restriction law intact. Eagles temporarily blocked the part of the so-called Women’s Right To Know Act (which we renamed the Sluts Deserve Punishment Act) that required doctors to show the patient an ultrasound image, describe its various features, and ask her if she wants to hear the fetal heartbeat, if the fetus is developed enough at that point to have one. Another hearing will take place in December to decide if the judge’s injunction will be permanent.
Although the temporary block was greeted by women’s rights advocates around the state, Judge Eagles still left the rest of the law in place, including the requirement that the patient be given a list of agencies that “offer alternatives to abortion,” such as “crisis pregnancy centers,” or CPCs; these centers, as we’ve written before, and as was confirmed recently by an extensive study of CPCs in N.C., are largely little more than fake medical clinics where utterly unqualified people wear white lab coats as if they were doctors. The clinics are usually run by anti-abortion and/or religious groups, many of which have given women misleading or false information in order to keep them from having an abortion.
Eagles left in place the requirement that the state set up a website containing abortion-related materials; each of the separate materials “shall prominently display the following statement: ‘The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique living human being.'” Which, again, is fine except for one crucial thing: Those are theological/philosophical theories, not provable scientific facts. So, although the most horrendous of the law’s parts has been blocked, at least temporarily, if you’re a woman who has chosen to have an abortion in North Carolina, you are, as of today, legally bound to have the religious right’s views spoon-fed to you whether you want to hear them or not.
As we’ve written before, I want to know how GOP legislators plan to keep a straight face the next time they describe themselves to voters as the party that “trusts people to make their own informed decisions without government intervention.” If you had to pick anything that the GOP-led General Assembly passed as the grandest example of that party’s hypocrisy and repugnant pandering to the religious right, it’s the abortion-restriction law that goes into effect today.
This article appears in Oct 25-31, 2011.
Sir, the key word here is “informed”. It seems that you are afraid that if people have all the information available to them about the fetus that somehow that is an attack on their freedom. Since when is information an offense to freedom? What exactly are you afraid of? too much information. How is ones choice not benefited by having all information available to her?This makes one simply able to make a “more informed choice” does it not? Your logic is irrational. SG Smith
Oh, by the way among those other “alternatives to abortion” agencies that you seem to not want young girls to know about are state adoption services which I am very glad that my best friends’ mom knew about, or she probably wouldn’t be here.
Gilley, I’ll answer your questions and then ask you one. “Since when is information an offense to freedom?” When you are forced to listen to the information whether you want to or not. I thought that was obvious. “What exactly are you afraid of?” In this particular instance, nothing. Although the prospect of theocrats gaining more control of our govt. is worrisome. “How is one’s choice not benefited by having all information available?” It is not helpful at all when part of the “information” is a listing of religious beliefs about “life begins at conception,” etc., rather than facts. In addition, it is incredibly insulting and condescending to assume that women who decide to have abortions do so with little thought or knowledge of facts; even if that was true, however, it’s not the govt.’s place to force women to hear a spiel of any sort.
Here is your question: Please explain how this particular law is not govt. interference in the private relationship between a woman and her doctor?
Dear Gilley,
If your best friends mom had an abortion, you would have a different best friend and wouldn’t know the difference.
It is Scientists, not religion, that has clearly and repeatedly affirmed that human life begins at conception. It is the 1973 Supreme Court, NOT SCIENTISTs, who disregarded their affirmation. In 1981, the United States Congress conducted hearings to answer the question, “When does human life begin?” A group of internationally known scientists appeared before a Senate judiciary subcommittee.13 The U.S. Congress was told by Harvard University Medical School’s Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, “In biology and in medicine, it is an accepted fact that the life of any individual organism reproducing by sexual reproduction begins at conception….”14
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, Jr., of the University of Colorado Medical School, testified that “the beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political or economic goals.”15
Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School noted: “The standard medical texts have long taught that human life begins at conception
See Landrum Shettles, Rites of Life:The Scientific Evidence for Life Before Birth,1983, p. 114 and The Subcommittee on Separation of Powers,Report to senate Judiciary Committee S-158,97th Congress, 1rst session,1981.
One may choose to willfully ignore this fact, but to deny it is a matter of clear rationalization.
Smitty,
I really like how you can’t even formulate your own opinion and must result to copy and pasting a response in here. Next time, at least get rid of the “reference” numbers, why don’t you?
So let me ask you this. On the issue of when a human being begins his own biological life you would rather know what I think than those who are experts trained in the field of biology and medicine? The previous blogger was saying the issue of the fetus status as a human being was a religious opinion. I thought he would like to see that such is not the case by quoting those far more knowledgeable than I am. I would rather you address the facts presented from those who know more than I on the question at hand. My opinion is seeking to be informed from a scientific perspective rather than my feelings which are irrelevant on this particular issue. Either a fetus is a human being or not. Biologists and scientists answer in the affirmative. Providing that information in an logical manner is “harmful” to no one The issue of VALUE of a fetus is more of a religious issue. The issue of human staus of a fetus has long been resolved.
“If your best friends mom had an abortion, you would have a different best friend and wouldn’t know the difference.”
Ah, but if my mother chose to have the abortion she was pressured to have, I wouldn’t be here. And my friend, that makes all the difference.
I’m not a part of the “religous right”…but I won.
I breathe,
Stephan