Look who’s anti-choice

In another round of efforts by the pro-life movement to at least help women considering abortion to make a fully informed choice, another judge has held up a law that would provide it. The ‘no-choice’ movement has succeeded again in withholding information from women…..for now.

Oklahoma’s new law requiring full disclosure and ultrasounds to women before abortion has been blocked by a restraining order, so the abortion business could proceed as usual.

“We’re sorry to see implementation of the law delayed,” said Tony Lauinger, state chairman of Oklahomans for Life and vice president of the National Right to Life Committee. “This has been a long process and apparently it will be a little longer.”

A pregnant woman should have all of the information available before she makes the irrevocable decision to terminate her pregnancy, Lauinger said, adding: “We’re confident that this law is constitutional.”

What did it institute?

The law requires doctors to use a vaginal probe, which provides a clearer picture of the fetus than a regular ultrasound, and to describe the fetus in detail, including its dimensions, whether arms, legs and internal organs are visible and whether there is cardiac activity.

The law also requires doctors to turn a screen depicting the ultrasound images toward the woman so she can view them.

But get this…

The Center for Reproductive Rights has said the law forces a woman to hear information that may not be relevant to her medical care and could interfere with the physician-patient relationship by compelling doctors to deliver unwanted speech.

What? The full disclosure of the medical/biological facts of the woman’s pregnancy is, through this tortured logic, not relevant to her medical care? And…..it could interfere with the physician-patient relationship by compelling doctors to deliver unwanted speech?!

Some thoughts…..when a doctor has a pregnant woman in his care he is treating two patients. He can only treat the second patient by giving full information to the woman carrying that smaller patient. The reason the pro-abortion movement has so aggressively fought informed consent is because the doctor has to tell the mother that he is going to kill the second patient. That’s a literal translation of the euphemistic clouds of rhetoric obfuscating what goes on in an abortion clinic. And the doctor’s right ‘not to deliver unwanted speech’ outweighs the woman’s right – patient number one carrying patient number two – to have that information about her health and the risks to it, and the risks to the second patient, if this procedure is carried out??!!

[Teresa Collett, a University of St. Thomas Law School professor who represented the state when a similar law passed in 2008 was challenged by the Center for Reproductive Rights,] a native of Norman, Okla., said Monday that nothing in Oklahoma’s abortion statute is inconsistent with standard medical practice.

Really. That’s always been my first reaction to this. You couldn’t get away with any hospital or clinic treatment of anything without full disclosure and signed informed consent. Let’s be reasonable.

“It would be remarkable if a women would undergo a medical procedure and a doctor would not have an obligation to describe the procedure and the results of that procedure to the patient,” Collett said.

She said state lawmakers required abortion providers to describe the ultrasound’s images because of some doctors’ “unusual failure” to pass along the information to pregnant women.

Note the description. It’s “unusual failure” because the usual is to fully disclose everything (to the point of scaring us off of routine procudures sometimes because of those ‘remote possibilities’ the information has to disclose).

The Center for Reproductive Rights challenged the law on behalf of Nova Health Systems, operator of Reproductive Services of Tulsa, and Dr. Larry Burns, who the group said provides abortions in Norman.

Note the vested interest abortion providers have in withholding information that informs women about the truths of abortion.

Officials at Reproductive Services have said the law had drawn emotional responses from patients, some leaving in tears from the room where ultrasound procedures are performed because of what they had to hear.

Understandably. But what was it about what they heard that left them in tears?

Truth and consequences. The truth of what their pregnancy actually held, and the consequences of terminatng it.

As long as abortion on demand is legal, at least let the ‘choice’ be fully informed.