Court allows Texas law on ultrasound before abortion

A Texas law requiring all women seeking an abortion to have a sonogram and for abortion providers to show or describe the image to the woman and play sounds of the fetal heart beat, does not violate the Constitution, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas law, enacted in 2011, did not infringe on abortion providers' free speech rights, Reuters reported.

"The required disclosures of a sonogram [ultrasound scan], the fetal heartbeat, and their medical descriptions are the epitome of truthful, non-misleading information," Chief Judge Edith Jones wrote for the three-judge panel, who overturned a lower federal court's decision.

Just before the law was set to take effect Sept. 1, US District Judge Sam Sparks in Austin, Texas, had found parts of it "unconstitutionally vague," according to CNN. 

Sparks ruled that it violated physicians' First Amendment free-speech rights by compelling them to "advance an ideological agenda with which they may not agree, regardless of any medical necessity, and irrespective of whether the pregnant women wish to listen," according to the Wall Street Journal.

He blocked Texas from enforcing penalties against a doctor who failed to place ultrasound pictures where the woman could see them or failed to make the fetus' heartbeat audible, and blocked penalties against the woman.

In June, a coalition of medical providers represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights had sued to block the law, arguing that it made doctors a "mouthpiece" for the state's ideological message, according to Reuters.

[They] also argued that disclosure of the sonogram and fetal heartbeat was not "medically necessary" and therefore beyond the state's power to regulate the practice of medicine.

As it stands, the Texas law decrees that while a woman seeking an abortion could decline to view the legally required sonogram, she could not decline to hear the physician's description of it unless she qualified for an exception due to rape, incest or fetal abnormality.

The WSJ quoted Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott as saying in a statement: "The Texas sonogram law falls well within the State's authority to regulate abortions and require informed consent from patients before they undergo an abortion procedure."