The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the American Civil Liberties Union that challenged a Kentucky Law which mandated doctors to perform ultrasounds and show fetal images before administering an abortion.
What We Know:
- According to NBC News, the high court declined, without comment, to hear the appeal. Kentucky argued that the law is “simple and straightforward,” and that the law does nothing but provide women with information relevant to their decision.
- The ACLU argued that the law forced patients to see the images even if she didn’t want to, and that it violated doctors’ First Amendment rights. They went on to say that it had no medical basis and was designed only to coerce a woman into opting out of having an abortion.
- The law had been upheld by the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017 and was signed by Gov. Matt Bevin. Bevin is an anti-abortion Republican who lost his bid for re-election last month but that ruling was on hold pending the Supreme Court appeal.
- Senior state issues manager Elizabeth Nash for the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that backs abortion rights, called the Kentucky law a “shaming tactic”.
There are many that believe the decision shows that the state can interfere with medical health practices and create stigmas surrounding abortion.
