Laws Requiring Ultrasounds Before Abortions Create 'Ethical Quandary' For Providers, Slate Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: MRI / PET / Ultrasound
Article Date: 23 Oct 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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"Dread is the emotion pro-life groups look to instill when they push states to pass laws that make an ultrasound part of the abortion procedure," Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon writes in an opinion piece. Fourteen states have passed laws requiring abortion providers to offer or perform ultrasounds, and four states -- Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma -- "have taken the galling step of requiring [patients] to have one regardless of need," Bazelon writes. According to Bazelon, state laws that require providers to only offer ultrasounds "don't intrude all that much on the doctor-patient relationship" because many providers perform ultrasounds "anyway to help determine the week of the pregnancy." In addition, she writes, "it's hard to argue that women deciding whether to have an abortion should be shielded from accurate scientific information, which is what ultrasounds are, after all." However, laws that "go beyond offering ultrasounds to mandating them" are more objectionable, Bazelon writes. She cites a new law in Oklahoma (SB 1878) that requires abortion providers to not only perform an ultrasound but also to "'provide simultaneous explanation of what the ultrasound is depicting'" and "'display the ultrasound images so that the pregnant woman may view them'" as being at the "heap of paternalism that Justice Anthony Kennedy started climbing two years ago, in his opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart, the decision that banned one method of late-term abortion." Bazelon says that a patient is permitted to "avert her eyes from the screen," adding, "Maybe the legislators should have also thought to mention putting her hands over her ears."

The Oklahoma law has several other "objectionable provisions," she continues, adding that "the law talks about administering the drugs [for a medication abortion] and follow-up care in a way that doesn't make sense" to physicians. The law also would prevent women from "bring[ing] suit against a doctor who failed to tell her about a detected birth defect," according to Bazelon. She adds that laws -- such as the Oklahoma statute and a South Dakota statute that requires doctors to give patients who come in for an abortion a mandatory written statement stating that an abortion includes "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide" -- put providers in the "ethical quandary" of choosing between breaking the law or engaging in a practice that goes against their best medical judgment or a patient's will. "For pro-life advocates, the dilemma for doctors is all gravy," Bazelon says, adding, "If the laws make abortion providers feel like they can't in good conscience perform abortions in light of the statutory straightjacket, maybe already beleaguered state clinics will have to close their doors" (Bazelon, Slate, 10/22).

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