In a double loss for pro-abortion interests, Wyoming has passed a law requiring ultrasounds before pregnant women may receive abortion pills. Oddly, the Wyoming governor’s poor argumentation against the law might be just as damaging to the abortion lobby as the physical restrictions themselves.
It comes as an override of Gov. Mark Gordon’s (R-WY) initial veto, against which Wyoming’s House and Senate both voted by large margins. Along with the ultrasound requirement, the new law mandates a 48-hour waiting period before the patient may obtain the pills but does not require the mother to view the ultrasound image.
The centrality of abortion pill access to abortion advocacy is on account of two qualities. Its prominence is one, as chemical abortion accounts for more than 60% of all abortions in the United States. To pro-abortion lobbyists, the more the merrier. After that, the conceptual advantage of the abortion pill is another aspect: It keeps abortion commonplace and easily obtained, well known but under the radar, much like a drug deal. The abortion pill is an impressive obscurant of the reality of abortion.
An ultrasound, rather, brings the pregnancy to the level of reality for the mother. It not only confirms whether the pregnancy will even comply with the pills’ methods — something that seems to be a crucial component of the process — but it determines whether a chemical abortion will also prove life-threatening to the mother. If abortion is largely about safety, as proponents often claim, and if “safety” stumps life, then the ultrasound should be an unproblematic step in the favored direction.
And yet, Gordon argues on the basis of “well-being” that the law “creates the prospect of an unnecessary, intimate, and invasive procedure (transvaginal ultrasound) which subjects women to an uncomfortable, and potentially traumatic experience in what may already be a very overwhelming situation.” With the objection that “forcing victims of rape to endure such an invasion a second time seems cruel,” he turns the issue into an exceptions framework problem.
The previous pro-life record on which Gordon stands to justify his position is real and need not be ignored. Back when he passed a (later-overturned) Wyoming law banning the abortion pill altogether, such psychological considerations bore no weight for Gordon: Exceptions to that law specifically excluded “any psychological or emotional conditions” from a classification of “imminent peril.”
It would seem now that the governor has tried to construct a novel category of exceptions for what should be a straightforward, even beneficial arrangement. The willingness of a woman to be able to complete an ultrasound and still go through with an abortion would be a major win for the pro-abortion side, if a loss for humanity. It is something that they would pursue if they could place unfettered belief in their cause. But it is in the nature of abortion advocacy to operate outside of truth.
The pills’ effects are hidden in the womb and known only by their consequence. Mothers do not have to reckon with the humanity of the child before taking the medication, and nor do they have to know that it works by starving and suffocating the child.
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There may be valid concerns over the dangers of ultrasound technology, especially with regard to health impacts on the baby. These do not appear pertinent to a circumstance in which a mother may seek to end her child’s life anyway. They do not form the grounds for objection to the Wyoming law. The chief focus, from either side of the issue, is the abortion pills. They are dangerous drugs whose underregulation usually results in fatal complications, yet they are a point of serious grasping for abortion advocates.
With Gordon’s arguments of emotion-based exceptions, he reveals the full subjectivity of the pro-abortion argument. Whatever was left in the cause that was realistic or forceful, he neutralized. The only way it will get any attention, though, is if it makes it to the Supreme Court.