{"id":199777,"date":"2019-04-05T16:23:39","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T21:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=199777"},"modified":"2019-04-05T23:31:02","modified_gmt":"2019-04-06T04:31:02","slug":"appeals-court-upholds-kentucky-ultrasound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/appeals-court-upholds-kentucky-ultrasound\/","title":{"rendered":"Victory: Appeals court overturns lower ruling, upholds Kentucky’s ultrasound law"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In a 2-1 ruling<\/a> yesterday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s ruling that struck down a Kentucky law requiring doctors to show women ultrasounds of their preborn babies and allow them to listen to the fetal heartbeat, prior to an abortion. According to a press release from the Liberty Counsel, “The legislation specifically requires doctors to describe an ultrasound although women can avert their eyes and ask to have the sound turned off…. [P]hysicians who fail to attempt to show and describe the unborn baby to the patient could face fines of up to $250,000 and action against their medical license.”<\/p>\n

The law had previously been ruled unconstitutional, says Liberty Counsel (LC), because a lower court claimed it violated physicians’ free speech rights. “Governor Matt Bevin appealed,” says LC, “and now a three-judge panel on the Sixth Circuit, led by Judge John Bush, a Trump appointee, has reversed and reinstated the law.”<\/p>\n

LC goes on to say in its press release:<\/p>\n

The majority opinion, written by Judge Bush and joined by Reagan appointee Alan Eugene Norris, said the Kentucky law did not step on doctors\u2019 First Amendment free speech rights and that ultrasound images were \u201crelevant\u201d to the decision as to whether to terminate what he explicitly called \u201cunborn life.\u201d Bush said the legislation complied with the Supreme Court’s seminal 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which established that states can enact laws necessary to obtain women’s \u201cinformed consent\u201d prior to an abortion, as long as those laws don’t pose an \u201cundue burden\u201d on the abortion right<\/b>.<\/em><\/p>\n

In addition, LC quotes Judge Bush, who says ultrasounds and heartbeats are not “false or misleading” but “convey[] objective medical facts,” adding that the information given is “relevant to the patient’s decision whether to abort unborn life.”<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Man becomes pro-life after seeing his baby on ultrasound: \u2018There is no doubt that\u2019s a baby\u2019<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n