Tuesday, August 30, 2011

US Judge grants injunction against Texas Sonogram Law

Absolutely, great news from the Center for Reproductive Rights.  
When anti-choice Texas legislators passed a law earlier this year inserting themselves between doctors and women seeking to end their pregnancies, we sprang into action—and so did you.

We filed a lawsuit to block the law, you responded with an overwhelming outpouring of support—and today we scored an important early victory.

Finding that Texas’s intrusive ultrasound law violates the First Amendment and certifying our case as a class action, a federal judge has blocked the state from enforcing significant parts of the law until the case is resolved.

That means doctors won’t face the threat of losing their medical licenses if they do not show women seeking abortions their ultrasound images—as the law requires, even if the women say no. Doctors cannot be forced to describe the sonograms, or to make women listen to the fetal heartbeat over their objections.

The ruling makes clear what we have been saying all along—this law makes doctors puppets in the hands of an overreaching legislature seeking to undermine women’s reproductive rights by any means available.

As the judge himself writes, the law “compels physicians to advance an ideological agenda with which they may not agree, regardless of any medical necessity, and irrespective of whether the pregnant women wish to listen.”

We will not allow these lawmakers to turn back the clock on reproductive rights in Texas—and, with this lawsuit, we’re sending a message to anti-choice politicians everywhere that we will fight relentlessly to beat back their attacks.

We need you to keep standing with us—through this case, and in all our efforts to advance the fundamental reproductive rights of women across the U.S. and around the world.

Meantime, I hope you will join me in celebrating this crucial victory.
The Center For Reproductive Rights homepage
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