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Legislator: Co-sponsors were duped on Pa. ultrasound bill
A bill requiring ultrasounds before abortions is making its way to the Pennsylvania House floor - but one Representative says even the bill's sponsors are now backing away from it.
Legislator: Co-sponsors were duped on Pa. ultrasound bill
One reason House Bill 1077 — which would require ultrasounds before abortions, with the monitor pointed toward the woman — has drawn so much concern from abortion rights advocates is that the legislation, introduced by Rep. Kathy Rapp (R-Warren) has more than 100 co-sponsors. But Rep. Mike O'Brien, a Philly Democrat, says that many of those co-signers had no idea what they were signing up for.
"When somebody puts a bill in, they send a memo around for co-sponsorship," he says. The memo on this one was "deceiving. It didn’t indicate the depth of what this bill would do. So a lot of people signed on to this thinking it was something to do with women’s health and not understanding that it was an anti-choice initiative." O'Brien has been trying to explain to them (he says successfully) that the bill — which has actually gotten more drastic, having been amended to require accurate ultrasounds even for pregnancies under nine weeks, which must be done trans-vaginally — amounts to "governmental rape."
It seems that creating a bill no one can disagree with, and then making it increasingly anti-abortion through the legislative process, has become something of a go-to M.O. in the General Assembly. O'Brien says another recently enacted law, which requires abortion providers to meet the standards of ambulatory surgery centers, also started out innocuously enough. "Regardless of where you are on the choice issue, everyone reacted in horror to [the practices of Philly abortion provider Kermit] Gosnell. it was an awful situation. So when you brought that bill out — and the bill in its original form was crafted by Sen. [Pat] Vance, who’s a registered nurse and had worked with Planned Parenthood advocates — the original form was an agreed-upon bill. But then it got amended and amended, and it got more and more egregious."
Like that law, which is expected to significantly increase the cost of abortions and reduce access to them, the so-called Women's Right to Know Act would add another hurdle to abortion rights in the commonwealth. (Here's one of several petitions.)
"It is a very dangerous bill. It's not only insulting and very unnecessary; it's medically dangerous," argues Sue Frietsche, senior staff attorney at the Women's Law Center, which organizes the statewide coalition Pennsylvanians for Choice. For one thing, it could lead women who are experiencing miscarriages to stay home rather than seeking medical treatment; for another, it will almost certainly result in the administration of medically unnecessary ultrasounds, something the Food and Drug Administration has warned against. And that's not even counting the dangers to abused women who must take two envelopes with prints of their ultrasound images with them after the appointment.
"Abusers are very good at controlling every aspect of their abusees lives," she says. "Putting this evidence of a pregnancy with the woman's name on it into the hands of women and requiring them to possess that and keep it and carry it to their health-care provider in order to get an abortion — why would you ever do something like that? We have to concern ourselves with the most vulnerable women, and this bill is very problematic for them."
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