In North Carolina, A Legal Fight To Save Lives

• By Alan Sears
• Posted Nov 22, 2011
• No Comments »

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. It’s worth infinitely more than that, though, to defenders of life in the womb, who know that even a glimpse of a living child through a fuzzy ultrasound image is often enough to persuade a young mother not to abort the baby inside her.

That’s one reason ultrasound laws – requiring that women be given every opportunity to look at that image and hear their child’s heartbeat before undergoing an abortion – are being passed by voters and legislatures all over the country. It’s also why groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood are working desperately to block this kind of legislation – or have such laws declared unconstitutional.

Those two groups are waging just that kind of legal attack right now in North Carolina, where they’ve filed a federal lawsuit to overthrow an ultrasound law passed last July by the state’s general assembly. On November 15, the Alliance Defense Fund and the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project, representing several eminent North Carolina medical doctors, post-abortive women, and pregnancy resource centers, filed a motion to intervene in that lawsuit. (In January, a federal court granted ADF and Jubilee intervention in a similar Oklahoma case.)

Known as the North Carolina Woman’s Right to Know Act, or H.B. 854, the law requires “a 24-hour waiting period and the informed consent of a pregnant woman before an abortion may be performed.” The law also calls for mothers to undergo an ultrasound examination four to 72 hours before being prepped for an abortion, and to hear the abortionist describe what an abortion really entails. Mothers are not required to look at the displayed images, listen to the baby’s heartbeat, or attend to the abortionist’s explanations. But they must be given the opportunity.

“Giving mothers the information they need before making a life-and-death decision is clearly more important than an abortionist’s bottom line,” says ADF Senior Counsel Steven H. Aden. “Those attacking this law are obviously more concerned about financial gain from abortion than the best interests of mothers and their preborn children.”

The federal court allowed the law to go into effect last month minus the ultrasound and heartbeat provisions, which are on hold while the lawsuit proceeds. Jubilee Campaign’s General Counsel Samuel B. Casey, one of nearly 2,100 attorneys in the ADF alliance, is lead counsel on behalf of the parties seeking to intervene to defend those provisions. ADF attorneys are co-counsel along with local counsel W. Eric Medlin of the Greensboro firm Robertson, Medlin & Bloss, PLCC.

The implications of this case – not only for other states around the country, but for the lives of countless women and children – are enormous.  Please pray for our allies and attorneys.