Thank goodness for the few people left in government who aren’t trying to drag us back to the 1930’s. We’re lucky that some judges still understand the idea of constitutional protections, and are willing to stand up to ridiculously spiteful laws that violate those protections.
Vice President Mike Pence is one of the leaders most in need of reining-in by someone with antact sense of decency.
For example, when he was serving as the Governor of Indiana, Pence signed a law that prevented women for having an abortion unless they went through an ultrasound 18 hours before the procedure.
Obviously, the law was another attempt by conservative lawmakers to prevent abortions from happening by making increasingly difficult to have one. As soon as the bill was signed into law, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, represented by the ACLU, filed suit against the state. The law went into effect last July, but a ruling came down just this week.
The preliminary injunction was issued by U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt. She wrote that the law had more to do with restricting the legal rights of women than trying to protect human life. She said:
“These burdens are clearly undue when weighed against the almost complete lack of evidence that the law furthers the State’s asserted justifications of promoting fetal life and women’s mental health outcomes.”
While the ruling is seen by prochoice advocates as victory for women’s health, it hardly eliminates all of the restrictions have have been placed on abortions across the nation.
In fact, before the 18 hour demand was placed on women in need of abortions, Indiana women were still required to have an ultrasound before the procedure was allowed. It’s just that they didn’t have to have it so close to procedure itself.
And before this particular law, there was no requirement for doctors and other medical personnel to show the images to the mothers and to describe in detail what those images showed.
The cruelty of the men who continue to write these laws is astonishing.
We are just lucky that one judge, at least, is will to tell Mike Pence that he is way out of bounds on this particular draconian law.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkbyRXI_8Sw
Featured image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
