Abortion

For the second time in five years, the Senate passed a dangerous bill that would require women to wait at least 24 hours before obtaining an abortion and impose onerous and biased “informed consent” requirements unlike those for any other medical procedure. Fortunately, the House took no action on the proposal. In testifying against the legislation, ACLU volunteer attorney Carolyn Mannis pointed out numerous constitutional problems with the bill. Earlier this year the state was ordered to pay ACLU attorneys over $300,000 in attorneys fees for their successful challenge to the last antichoice bill passed by the legislature, the so-called “partial birth abortion” ban enacted in 2000.