Supreme Court Spikes North Carolina’s Forced Ultrasound Law

by Tara Culp-Ressler

North Carolina will not be allowed to enact one of the most radical forced ultrasound laws in the country, thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to avoid reviewing the law. The Court’s decision is a victory for reproductive rights proponents, who challenged North Carolina’s law on First Amendment grounds — pointing out that the measure essentially forced doctors to deliver an anti-abortion message on behalf of the state. The justices are allowing to stand a unanimous decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that agreed the law violated doctors’ right to free speech.
The law in question would require abortion patients to listen to a detailed description of their ultrasound before being allowed to continue with their pregnancy termination. The legislation includes very specific language that abortion doctors must relay. For instance, they must tell their patients about the fact that “the father is liable to assist in the support of the child” and “the woman has other alternatives to abortion, including keeping the baby or placing the baby for adoption,” as well as information about her fetus’ “anatomical and physiological characteristics.”
Even if the patient attempted to avoid that information by closing her eyes and covering her ears, North Carolina’s law makes doctors legally obligated to continue speaking.
So-called “informed consent” measures, which require abortion patients to receive biased counseling materials intended to dissuade them from going through with an abortion, have become increasingly popular on the state level. A recent Guttmacher Institute review of these state policies found that they typically include information that’s both politically motivated and medically inaccurate.
But the plaintiffs argued that North Carolina’s law is particularly extreme because of the lengths that doctors must go to frame this information, and the lower courts agreed. According to the panel of judges on the Fourth Circuit who blocked the law last year, “transforming the physician into the mouthpiece of the state undermines the trust that is necessary for facilitating healthy doctor-patient relationships and, through them, successful treatment outcomes.”
Abortion rights groups are celebrating the Supreme Court’s move to let that decision stand.
“Doctors shouldn’t be forced to humiliate a woman and disregard their best medical judgment in order to provide an abortion,” Jennifer Dalven, the director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement. “The purpose of this law was crystal clear: to shame a woman who has decided to have an abortion out of getting one.”
Medical experts are also praising Monday’s news. Mark DeFrancesco, the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), said in a statement that forced ultrasound laws “run counter to best medical practices,” adding that North Carolina’s policy specifically “violates the principle of appropriate informed consent.”
However, other abortion-related decisions are still looming. The Supreme Court has not yet indicated whether it will weigh in on a different state law in Mississippi that presents somewhat of a more subtle threat to reproductive rights. If that case is allowed to proceed, the only abortion clinic left standing in Mississippi will be at risk of closure.