In Victory for Women and Free Speech, Court Shuts Down State Ultrasound Law

Let's call this what it is--unwanted penetration is rape, period.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/12/22/victory-women-and-free-speech-court-shuts-down-state-ultrasound-law

North Carolina law that forces physicians to show and describe an ultrasound to patients seeking an abortion is "ideological in intent" and violates doctors' free-speech rights, ruled a federal court on Monday.

"This compelled speech, even though it is a regulation of the medical profession, is ideological in intent and in kind," wrote Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in the decision (pdf) striking down the state mandate.

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel asserts that the "the state cannot commandeer the doctor-patient relationship to compel a physician to express its preference to the patient" and that the 2011 law is a violation of the First Amendment.

Reproductive rights groups welcomed the news.

"Exam rooms are no place for propaganda and doctors should never be forced to serve as mouthpieces for politicians who wish to shame and demean women," said Nancy Northup, President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which along with Planned Parenthood, American Civil Liberties Union, and ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation filed suit against the law on behalf of several North Carolina physicians.