[Update: Rachel Maddow's segment about these laws on Wednesday noted the forced ultrasound requires vaginal insertion. Sounds great for rape victims! This sort of invasive procedure has clear 4A implications. See, e.g., here.]
Two laws were passed over in Oklahoma over the governor's veto:
Though other states have passed similar measures forcing women to have ultrasounds, Oklahoma’s law goes further, requiring a doctor or technician to set up the monitor where the woman can see it and describe the heart, limbs and organs of the fetus. No exceptions are made for rape and incest victims.
The second measure passed into law Tuesday protects doctors from malpractice suits if they decide not to inform the parents of a unborn baby that the fetus has birth defects. The intent of the bill is to prevent parents from later suing doctors who withhold information to try to influence them against having an abortion.
The governor said the second law is immoral:
“It is unconscionable to grant a physician legal protection to mislead or misinform pregnant women in an effort to impose his or her personal beliefs on a patient,” [Gov.] Henry said.
We recently saw two laws passed by a nearby state also with contrasting functions -- one required more effort be made to see if the woman going for an abortion was not mentally unbalanced while the other removed mental health as a reason for late term abortions. Here, one provision forces a woman who wants to have an abortion to listen to information while those who might originally not have done so are denied a means of restitution if a physician leaves out important information about the fetus. Physicians can act like priests and get away with it.
This underlines the double standard that these laws often tend to obviously have. Teenagers need to get notification or consent (with some often byzantine judicial bypass regime in place) before having an abortion but not before they plan to give birth.* Women are forced to undergo a medical procedure even after being raped, but only to try to prevent abortions. Such a law was already declared unconstitutional, but this is not a barrier for anti-choice legislators.
And the beat goes on.
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* See, e.g., this article and sources cited therein. One point:
The majority of states require minors to engage their parents or legal guardians in their choice to obtain an abortion, but not in decisions to give their babies up for adoption or to become parents.
This is a moral choice to favor childbirth even though often assistance (from parents or otherwise) for the other choices are as or more important. Many years later mourn giving up children for adoption. Many have children who they might not be able to handle or who it might be more moral to not have in the first place.
A neutral law that requires parental involvement can have problems too, but at least it would not be so slanted in favor of the anti-choice side while claiming to be in the best interests of the teenagers.