Womenstake, NWLC's Blog

by Jill Morrison

South Carolina almost became the first state to require a woman to have and look at an ultrasound before terminating her pregnancy.  Fortunately, the SC attorney general agreed with advocates that forcing a woman to undergo a medically unnecessary procedure and view an image against her will is unconstitutional.

One of the current trends in restricting access to abortion is to say that the new law or regulation is needed to make sure women have full “informed consent.”  A majority of states already have “informed consent” laws for abortion that go far beyond what is required for other medical procedures, and provide women with biased and medically inaccurate information.   Now anti-choice activists are trying to make these laws even more burdensome. We’ve already blogged about a South Dakota law that, in the guise of “informed consent,” would impose a particular ideology on women seeking abortions.