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The First Amendment scored a victory for abortion rights Monday when a North Carolina appeals court ruled that a 2011 law forcing women to undergo ultrasounds before getting an abortion is unconstitutional because it violates freedom of speech. Of course, what the court took issue with wasn’t quite the whole subjecting-women-to-an-unnecessary-medical-procedure thing, but rather with the fact that doctors are forced to deliver ultrasound results to women who don’t want to hear them. “[T]he statement compelled here is ideological,” the court ruled — and thus violates the doctors’ freedom of speech.
