All posts tagged "Transvaginal Ultrasound"

Though Texas, Oklahoma and North Carolina all managed to get away with passing transvaginal ultrasound mandates for women seeking abortions with little national attention, it took my former home state of Virginia's effort to do the same to bring people's undivided attention to the anti-abortion movement's long fight to make abortion as humiliating, expensive, difficult and unobtainable as constitutionally permissible. And not only did all that attention kill the Virginia bill (and a similar one in Pennsylvania), it touched off what some have taken to calling the GOP's War On Women, though I'd argue these efforts started long before the election cycle.

Idaho's controversial forced ultrasound bill was killed Tuesday evening after a House committee chairman declined to hold a hearing on the bill, just days after its Senate passed the legislation.

Even as the transvaginal ultrasound bill in Virginia was causing national outrage, Pennsylvania conservatives were quietly pushing a even more restrictive abortion bill. The legislation is designed with so many difficult and differing restrictions that long-time abortion policy analyst Elizabeth Nash at the Guttmacher Institute told Raw Story, "I've never seen anything like it."

For his support of the controversial transvaginal ultrasound bill, one Virginia Republican lawmaker received the ultimate punishment from his wife: No sex.

Virginia state Del. Jennifer McClellan (D) said on Wednesday that an updated bill requiring women seeking abortion to have an ultrasound causes more problems than it solves, including requiring the unnecessary procedure for women who miscarry.

"Song a Day" video blogger Jonathan Mann published a little tune yesterday that seems destined to go viral, keying into the state of Virginia's debate about abortion restrictions and whether the state should be able to force women into medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds, just to obtain abortion services.