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Latest round of anti-abortion legislation gets a push in Harrisburg
Proponents of so-called "Right to Know" bill hope to move quickly on legislation that would require ultrasounds before abortions.
Latest round of anti-abortion legislation gets a push in Harrisburg
Some 39 years after the passage of Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion advocates are stepping up their game in a big way in Pennsylvania. The latest effort: the misleadingly named "Women's Right to Know Act," which would require ultrasounds before abortions and then give women "the right" to look at them. State Rep. Kathy Rapp, who introduced the bill and recruited 112 co-sponsors, is pushing hard and expects the bill "to be considered by the House Health Committee in the near future."
Says Rapp, "Ultrasounds dispel the myth that abortion is only about removing a ‘clump of cells’ and that information in itself is absolutely critical to every mother’s ability to make a fully informed decision.” While the bill does not force women to look at the ultrasound screen it does require practitioners to "Position the screen so that the patient is able to view the ultrasound test in its entirety, with a view of her unborn child, while that test is being conducted to determine gestational age. The patient is not required to view the screen."
Opponents, on the other hand, say it's part of a piecemeal dismantling of women's rights to choose. Rep. Babette Josephs tells CP: "It's a very thinly disguised attempt to make sure that it's difficult for women to get abortions, to require abortion providers to perform actions that are not medically necessary, that have nothing to do with high-quality medical care, and which are designed only to make it difficult for women to access medically safe abortion, which is their Constitutional right." (Plus, she adds, it's ludicrous to be zeroing in on this in the first place: "Why can I not concentrate on what people in the state, need which is jobs?")
Here's Rapp's video plea on the topic.
Touching, right? For those with anti-abortion agendas, it dovetails nicely with House Bill 574 and Senate Bill 3, which effectively raise the cost of doing business for clinics and restrict insurance coverage of abortions. Notably, an ultrasound would not be required for abortions done within eight weeks — perhaps because fetuses that small wouldn't have quite the emotionally hefty impact.
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