Bob CollinsNebraska has became the latest battleground in the war over abortion. The Legislature this week passed a bill that requires a full physical and mental assessment of any woman seeking an abortion.
Says the Omaha World Herald:
Under the bill, women would have to be assessed for any indication they felt pressured to have an abortion, as well as for risk factors that could predispose them to mental or physical complications.
Risk factors could include any identified in any research report published a year or more before in any peer-reviewed journal indexed by one of two major scientific indexing services.
The bill may be aimed at creating more pressure for the abortion provider. In the bill (available here) the only requirement on the woman is that she undergo the assessment. However the bill, which is to be signed into law today, includes penalties for doctors who don’t comply.
The burden would also rest with the doctor to prove that the reason parents weren’t notified of an abortion by a minor is that the minor was fully capable of making the decision herself.
The doctor also has the burden “of proving that the pregnant woman had sufficient reflection time, given her age, maturity, emotional state, and mental capacity, to comprehend and consider such information.” It’s not clear how one goes about proving that.
