Women seeking an abortion in North Carolina will have to wait 24 hours, receive counseling and be presented with an ultrasound image of the fetus under an informed consent law passed on Thursday over the governor's objections.
Democratic Governor Beverly Perdue had vetoed the measure. But the state Senate voted on Thursday to override the veto, two days after the House of Representatives took similar action, which means the bill is now law and will take effect in October.
North Carolina joins 25 other states that require pre-abortion counseling that goes beyond basic medical "informed consent," according to Elizabeth Nash, public policy associate with Guttmacher Institute in Washington.
It is the tenth state to include the additional requirement of an ultrasound, which has drawn legal challenges in several states, Nash said.
The North Carolina law will require that an ultrasound image be presented and the sound of the fetal heartbeat be offered, though a woman is free to look away and ignore an explanation and medical description of what is on the screen.
Perdue, a Democrat and North Carolina's first female governor, vetoed the bill on June 27. In her veto message, she called the legislation a "dangerous intrusion into the confidential relationship that exists between women and their doctors."
Republican Representative Ruth Samuelson, the primary sponsor of the bill, has defended it as providing crucial information for women who are making a major and irrevocable decision.
North Carolina's General Assembly had been relatively moderate among Southern states in regulating abortion, but momentum for change grew last November when Republicans took control of both legislative chambers for the first time in more than a century.
Paige Johnson, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina, said this week that women don't need "state-scripted" counseling before they consent to a procedure they have already considered.
"Women give this decision great thought, and these legislators have passed legislation that assumes women are not capable of making this decision," Johnson said.
According to the latest figures available from the Guttmacher Institute, there were 33,140 abortions in North Carolina in 2008.
(Edited by Colleen Jenkins and Greg McCune)
I personally think that counseling is a good idea but to force a woman to listen to a fetal heartbeat on a sonogram is a little over the top. I just feel like they are using a tactic that is unfair to a woman. I know how I felt the first time I heard all three of my boys heartbeats...there is nothing like that moment. Now, imagine someone doing that to you when you had no intention on carrying that fetus to term. How do you think it would make them feel? I just think it is going to force alot of woman to chose motherhood when they are clearly not ready. In turn, allowing for more children to end up on the news as abused or dead! Roe vs Wade existed for this reason...give a woman a choice. I am sure that each and every woman who has every had an abortion has had to deal with the guilt of it at some point in their lives but can you imagine the guilt the state will have on their hands when that child they seemed to have forced on a woman is found beaten or dead. I don't know! This topic is just way too controversial! But these are still my two cents...and they count!
Come and dicuss the topic here with us on Mommy's Links!
Come and dicuss the topic here with us on Mommy's Links!
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