WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2012/Christian Newswire --
Today the Jubilee Campaign's Law of Life Project, along with two other public interest legal organizations, the Justice Foundation and the United States Justice Foundation, who jointly represent 317 Texas Women Harmed by Abortion due to a lack of informed consent before their abortions, applauded the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal's 26-page Opinion and Order that vacated a lower court's preliminary injunction obtained last August by Texas' abortion industry. The now vacated injunction (pending trial) had blocked on "vagueness" and unconstitutional "compelled speech" grounds the Texas law's requirement that an abortion provider perform and display a sonogram of the fetus, make audible the heart auscultation of the fetus for the woman to hear, and explain to her the results of each procedure and to wait 24 hours, in most cases, between these disclosures and performing the abortion. The Appeals Court, primarily relying upon the Supreme Court's Casey and Gonzales opinions, as well as the Eighth Circuit's Planned Parenthood v. Rounds decisions, concluded that the challenged provisions of the law were not vague and that the "provisions...requiring [these] disclosures and written consent are sustainable" under applicable Supreme Court precedents, "are within the State's power to regulate the practice of medicine, and therefore do not violate the First Amendment."
As "friends of the court," the 317 Texas Woman Harmed By Abortion, along with a number of other "friends of the court," filed amicus briefs providing the Appeals Court with the legal, humanitarian and common sense reasons the Court would be correct in reversing the court below and upholding the Texas law requiring every woman be given the opportunity to have all the information she needs, including a viewing and medical description of the real-time ultrasound images of her unborn child, before giving her truly voluntary and informed consent to abortion.
As Mayela Banks, one of the 317 Texas Women Hurt By Abortion, stated, "A picture is worth a thousand words, and the abortionists wanted to silence the voice of my baby."
"Now the woman can hear the sounds of her own baby's heartbeat and see the picture of her own child, not a picture from a textbook or something else. This decision will result in a reduction in the number of abortions in Texas. The reason for this is that women will actually see what is in their womb at the time when most abortions occur - a child with arms, feet, and legs which must be described to the woman and a beating heart which she must be allowed to hear," says Allan Parker, President of The Justice Foundation. "This scientific evidence will refute the lies of abortionists which they have told to thousands of Texas women over the years that the contents of the uterus are 'just a mass of tissue, just a blob, or not yet a baby.'" ...
Read full press release here.
