A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision is a victory for women’s rights, reproductive rights proponents, and physicians. It’s also a failure for hypocritical, radically immoral Republican men in North Carolina.

The court decided today to avoid reviewing a law that would force doctors to show and describe a fetal ultrasound to a patient immediately before an abortion, even if she resists. A U.S. District Judge previously struck down the law in 2014 for violating the First Amendment, but state officials filed an appeal to overturn this decision. The law was again branded unconstitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. In March of this year, North Carolina officials petitioned the Supreme Court in the hopes that the highest court would uphold their woman-hating law. Luckily, SCOTUS has better cases to review than this one, so the previous decisions to reject the law stand.

What’s so disturbing about the ultrasound law is that it symbolizes the too-widely-accepted belief that women are not able to make informed decisions about their own bodies. Lawmakers in North Carolina argued that this law was a protective measure under the umbrella of “informed consent” and that the law simply ensured that women made a “mature and informed” choice about the matter. But forcing doctors to deliver anti-abortion messages on behalf of the state, even when a woman does not agree to hear the information, isn’t consent.

The law used very detailed language that legally bound physicians to tell their patients about alternative options to abortion, such as “keeping the baby or placing the baby for adoption.” It also forced doctors to place the ultrasound image in front of the woman’s face and describe the “anatomical and physiological characteristics” to the patient before permitting an abortion. The law applied to women who were survivors of rape and incest, and those who discovered severe fetal abnormalities. Even more frustrating is the lawmakers’ incorrect assumption that women are inherently uninformed. Sixty-one percent of abortions are undertaken by women who already have one or more child, so they aren’t naïve about the implications of pregnancy or the responsibilities of parenthood. They don’t need the “help” of male lawmakers telling them that their decisions are invalid.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit included the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Last year, they argued in their brief that the law:

Commandeers unwilling physicians to use their own voice and expressive conduct to communicate the state’s message against abortion.

The brief further argued that:

It commandeers physicians to convey this message in a uniquely intrusive way — during a medical procedure while the patient is vulnerable and disrobed on an examination table with an ultrasound probe inside or on her.

The Supreme Court’s decision to deny another review of this law may be a victory today, but there are more anti-abortion laws making headlines that the justices will likely have to address soon. For example, an abortion regulation law in Mississippi threatens to close the last abortion clinic in the state. In a similar vein, a Texas regulation currently making its way through the legal system requires clinics to meet the same building equipment and staffing standards that hospitals must meet, reducing the number of abortion clinics in the state. The Texas law is particularly concerning, as it will cause nearly one million women of reproductive age to live more than 150 miles from an abortion clinic, making abortions even more inaccessible to women of limited income or those who have no disposable time to travel the obscenely long distances to a clinic in order to have the procedure.

Reproductive rights are women’s rights, not North Carolinian, lawmaking men’s rights. I’m glad to see that the Supreme Court, if even just passively, recognizes that.

Emily Dalgo

Emily Dalgo is a member of the American University Class of 2017 and a Law Street Media Fellow during the Summer of 2015. Contact Emily at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Thanks SCOTUS: A Victory for Reproductive Rights appeared first on Law Street.

Hey y’all!

Last week lawmakers in Utah passed HB 249, which “allows a person conceived through assisted reproduction access to non-identifying medical history of the donor from the fertility clinic.” This is a huge deal that has gotten zero attention. Maybe a couple of articles in some random news sites; the Salt lake Tribune and USA Today have covered it, but nothing that has grabbed the country’s attention.

I know who both of my biological parents are (they did it the old fashion way), but my dad was adopted and there have been so many questions about his biological parents’ medical history. When filling out any medical forms there are always plenty of questions about my parents’ and grandparents’ medical histories that I sometimes just can’t answer because there isn’t much known on my dad’s side. There is a certain kind of frustration behind that because I could be facing health risks that are passed on genetically without knowing anything about it.

I’m a strong believer that having too much information is better than not having any information at all, especially when it comes to your health!

Utah’s new law gives people a better idea of what they are genetically predisposed to while still maintaining a certain level of anonymity for the donor.

USA Today discusses the lack of interest that legislators have in “assisted reproduction,” claiming that legislators are afraid to get their hands dirty because of the doors that could be opened into a deeper conversation about conception, abortion, and embryos. I know, I know, no one wants to have a continuous debate about those topics because it seems like each side is beating a dead horse, but there is something to be said about the fact that there are children out there who have no idea about one side of their genetic traits.

Currently countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia all heavily regulate many areas of reproductive technology, and many scholars around the world claim that the U.S. does not. Like somehow we have allowed this medical venture to fall by the wayside.

In my opinion the government does not need to have its hands in every single cookie jar unless it is completely necessary. There are already enough regulations set by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, the American Medical Association, and the boards that license every doctor. It isn’t harmful for Utah’s legislature to step in and give people a legal right to know about their medical history. It’s impossible to get any information out of a doctor about someone else’s medical history and this just allows people to know what could possibly be in their future or what could affect their own children.

This legislation does open the door to other issues; donor-conceived offspring could want to have full access to all of the information about their donor. Sometimes people just want to know where they really came from, and sometimes the donor wants to know their offspring.

Sperm banks should do a full work up and have a detailed medical history about the person donating their eggs or sperm. I get that the process is meant to be quick and helpful for those who can not conceive without a little medical intervention, but in all reality it isn’t just sperm and eggs. These pieces of biology become human beings. This is the major process of creating a life. If you are going to create a life you should know all there is to know about the counterpart helping to create it!

I will leave you with a kick ass and somewhat relevant moment from Legally Blonde to lighten the mood!

Allison Dawson

Allison Dawson was born in Germany and raised in Mississippi and Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University, she’s currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative. Get in touch with Allison at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post People Born Via Assisted Reproduction Can Now Access Medical History appeared first on Law Street.

Most of us remember Todd Akin, former Missouri Senate candidate, for his comments about how women cannot get pregnant if they are “legitimately raped.” Unfortunately for him, and for everyone who has to deal with his moronic comments, the fiasco hasn’t ended there. In a recent attempt to explain his 2012 comments, all he did was dig himself into a deeper hole. It’s probably time to just stop talking, Mr. Akin. I mean, I’ve heard from doctors that if you legitimately have stupid thoughts, you won’t say them because your mouth has the ability to shut the whole thing down. Or, in this case, your hand will lose its ability to write a book if you plan to write legitimately ridiculous words.

In his new book (how did he get a publishing deal?), Firing Back, Akin defends his infamous 2012 “legitimate rape” comments and blames the evil media for spinning the whole thing. Someone needs to explain to Akin what spinning means, because he obviously doesn’t know. The media saying exactly what a politician says during an interview is not spin, Mr. Akin. That’s what we call “reporting the facts.”

In what I am sure is a positively invigorating piece of literature, Akin tries to educate his readers about what “legitimate rapes” are. You see, some rapes are not “legitimate” because some women falsely accuse, and when he spoke about a woman’s body shutting “that whole thing down,” he didn’t mean the reproductive system battening down the hatches. Rather, he was referring to rape-related “stress” inhibiting her ability to get pregnant. He does concede that perhaps his wording was a little off.  I feel like I need a Todd Akin Dictionary of Rape Terms to understand this guy’s insane reasoning.

Well, almost…

His comment brings up so many questions: what exactly is “illegitimate rape?” When a woman rejects sex sarcastically? When her attacker rapes her in a certain location? As far as I, and hopefully most other people with common sense know, uteri and fallopian tubes don’t have the capability of self-realization. I’ve never heard a case of ovaries yelling, “We’re under attack! Shut the whole thing down!” to their reproductive-system comrades.

Reviews say that the take away from his new book is that despite his apology immediately following the comments in 2012, Akin is legitimately not sorry. Apology redacted.

But not actually…

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Marisa Mostek (@MarisaJ44) loves globetrotting and writing, so she is living the dream by writing while living abroad in Japan and working as an English teacher. Marisa received her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder and a certificate in journalism from UCLA. Contact Marisa at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured Image Courtesy of [Jennifer Moo via Flickr]

Marisa Mostek

Marisa Mostek loves globetrotting and writing, so she is living the dream by writing while living abroad in Japan and working as an English teacher. Marisa received her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder and a certificate in journalism from UCLA. Contact Marisa at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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