As spring approaches, there seems to be an explosion not just in Virginia for state legislature-sponsored pre-abortion ultrasound laws. Differing by varying degrees of severity, trans-vaginal probing of women seeking abortions has been proposed by state legislatures in Ohio, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
You have to ask, why are we seeing such a rash of virulently anti-choice and anti-female legislation? There’s so much of it happening all at once… hmmm… you’d think it was a concerted effort. Actually, laws like these were first proposed in the mid 1990s. Now there are over twenty states requiring pre-abortion ultrasound. These states include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The intent is obvious: personify fetuses and dissuade women from having an abortion. By adding the procedure as requirement to an abortion, it makes the entire pursuit of an abortion far more expensive, thus more difficult to pursue. The law the Virginia legislature tried to pass last week was nothing new. This time, they were caught in the act by diligent bloggers and the press.