“I am so sorry,” the young woman said with compassion, and nudged the tissues closer. Then, after a moment’s pause, she told me reluctantly about the new Texas sonogram law that had just come into effect. I’d already heard about it. The law passed last spring but had been suppressed by legal injunction until two weeks earlier.
My counselor said that the law required me to have another ultrasound that day, and that I was legally obligated to hear a doctor describe my baby. I’d then have to wait 24 hours before coming back for the procedure. She said that I could either see the sonogram or listen to the baby’s heartbeat, adding weakly that this choice was mine.
“I don’t want to have to do this at all,” I told her. “I’m doing this to prevent my baby’s suffering. I don’t want another sonogram when I’ve already had two today. I don’t want to hear a description of the life I’m about to end. Please,” I said, “I can’t take any more pain.” I confess that I don’t know why I said that. I knew it was fait accompli. The counselor could no more change the government requirement than I could. Yet here was a superfluous layer of torment piled upon an already horrific day, and I wanted this woman to know it.
-“We Have No Choice: One Woman’s Ordeal with Texas’ New Sonogram Law” by Carolyn Jones in The Texas Observer. Today marks the 40th anniversary of Roe V. Wade. Jones will be on the show today to talk about her experience and the series of articles she wrote for the Observer about the changing landscape of women’s health and family planning regulation. (via nprfreshair)
This must stop. The choice to terminate a pregnancy -no matter what the reason is- should not be turned into a way to torture the woman who has made that decision. And this is what such laws are: torture, pure and simple. Imagine if such barriers existed for men who wanted a vasectomy, or some-such. Oh, yeah- that’s right. Men created these laws- men who hate women.
Let’s put an end to this state-sanctioned punitive torture once and for all. Pregnancies will be terminated no matter how many barriers are erected.
(via sunfell)
