Forced Ultrasound, "Informed Consent," and Women's Health In Texas: The Sad State Of The State

Last month, when news spread that Virginia legislators were considering a forced trans-vaginal ultrasound bill, the uproar was loud, clear and immediate: women would never stand for this invasive and unnecessary law. Politicos and pop-culture icons alike spoke out against the Republican-led legislation. What kind of world are we living in, reasonable people wondered, when "informed consent" is tantamount to state-sanctioned rape?

Here's what kind of world: the kind wherein a mandatory ultrasound law scads worse than the proposed Virginia bill has already been in place for five months. In Texas.

"Texas has the most extreme law that's being enforced right now," says the Center For Reproductive Rights' Julie Rikelman, the lead attorney on the CRR's lawsuit filed against the Texas legislation. Despite the sympathetic leanings of a federal district judge who initially ruled on the case, the suit has more or less been stalled by a vehemently anti-choice Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which denied the CRR's requested injunction against enforcement last month. Now, that means that all aspects of the law--mandated ultrasounds, 24-hour waiting periods, and forced speech--are now in full force in Texas.

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