Well, that was quick.
Today the US District Judge in the Nebraska biased counseling case I mentioned yesterday issued an order– just a day after hearing oral arguments. She agreed that the clinic filing the suit has a likelihood of prevailing on its claims, and agreed to block the state from enforcing any of the bad provisions of the statute until the case is resolved. Victory!
Judge Smith Camp noted that the NE legislature explained its motivation for the law as concern that the existing preabortion screening and counseling procedures were not accurate– and then pointed out the obvious hypocrisy in that reasoning:
No such legislative concern for the health of women, or of men, has given rise to any remotely similar informed-consent statutes applicable to other medical procedures, regardless of whether such procedures are elective or non-elective, and regardless of whether such procedures pose an equal or greater threat to the physical, mental, and emotional health of the patient.
The judge also mentioned the well-worn anti-choice trope that these laws are necessary because otherwise women will have abortions they’ll later wish they hadn’t. She observed that: “Some women who obtain abortions will come to regret that choice. That fact is inevitable, because any major decision will lead to regret in some percentage of cases,” noting in a footnote that many people regret, for instance, having children and getting married. I would be remiss in not also quoting the end of that footnote, in which the judge wrote “Only Edith Piaf was without regret. Had she been sober, she, too, might have had second-thoughts.”
In addition to being spunky and clever, Judge Smith Camp is also a Bush II appointee, which I think just makes this all the better. The fight isn’t over, though, because even after the case gets resolved in the district court, there’s still the 8th Circuit to contend with, which tends to be pretty hostile to abortion rights.
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