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The Supreme Court will leave in place a Kentucky law requiring doctors who perform abortions to show a patient an ultrasound of the fetus and narrate what’s going on, even if the patient doesn’t want to listen.
Kentucky’s only abortion clinic, EMW Women’s Surgical Center, had challenged the law alongside three of its doctors, who said it violates their free speech rights. But on Friday, the justices rejected taking up that challenge without comment.
The Kentucky measure, which also forces doctors to make patients listen to so-called “fetal heart tones” during the ultrasound, was signed into law in January 2017. Supporters of the law argue it ensures that people who undergo abortions can give “informed consent” to the procedure, but the doctors fighting against it say that’s not true.
“As a result of this law, while the patient is half-naked on the exam table with her feet in stirrups, usually with an ultrasound probe inside her vagina, the physician has to keep talking to her, showing her images and describing them, even as she tries to close her eyes and cover her ears to avoid the speech,” their petition to the Supreme Court reads. “A law that requires a physician to keep speaking even though her words do not inform anyone of anything is not an informed consent provision.”
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