A federal judge in Texas struck down a provision of a Texas anti-abortion law that required a doctor to give a woman a sonogram before an abortion. U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks said in his ruling that the law violated the First Amendment rights of both doctors and patients. One of dozens of anti-abortion laws enacted across the country, Texas’s law had been set to take effect Thursday. Sparks’s ruling also struck down a requirement that allowed women to avoid seeing the sonogram images only if they signed a statement saying they were pregnant from sexual assault or incest, saying the state cannot force a woman to disclose information that she may not even wish to tell police.
