Supreme Court declines to hear ACLU challenge to Kentucky's abortion ultrasound law

Kentucky's new restrictions on abortion will be allowed to stand without further challenge.

The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the law requiring women see a fetal ultrasound and listen to a heartbeat before getting an abortion, giving no comment for its Monday decision. Now, the bill signed into law by recently outvoted Gov. Matt Bevin (R) will go into effect.

Bevin signed the abortion restriction into law in 2017, and it has been entangled in court challenges ever since. The ACLU contended that the ultrasound and fetal heartbeat had no medical backing and that mandating them violated doctors' free speech rights. But the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the plaintiffs, declaring "as a First Amendment matter, there is nothing suspect with a state's requiring a doctor, before performing an abortion, to make truthful, non-misleading factual disclosures."

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Only four Supreme Court justices have to say they want to hear an appeal in order for it to appear on their docket. Yet this was a free speech argument and not one challenging Roe v. Wade, so the upholding of the Kentucky law doesn't indicate much about future abortion challenges headed to the Supreme Court this term.