Conservative Free Speech Advocates and Texas Sonogram Ruling

Conservative Dilemma:  What to Do When Free Speech Involves Speech They Don’t Agree With

The recent trend in campaign finance law is that the doctrine of free speech trumps restrictions on campaign activities.  The Supreme Court with its Conservative majority has consistently ruled that restrictions on campaign financing is a violation of the Freedom of Speech guaranteed by the Constitution.  They have even gone so far as to invalidate an Arizona law that provided increased public financing for candidates when the self funded competition used unlimited personal wealth to support a campaign.

One vigorous champion of this doctrine has been George Will, a dedicated Conservative opinion writer for the Washington Post and Conservative television star for over 30 years.  No one is more supportive of Free Speech as the argument against any campaign spending reforms than Mr. Will, regardless of how illogical his position is.



Damned Inconvenient at times, Isn't It for Conservatives



So it will be of great interest to The Dismal Political Economist and others to see how Mr. Will and his ilk react to a federal court decision in Texas.  The main issue was whether or not requiring a physician to perform a sonogram on a woman seeking a legal abortion and requiring certain speech by that physician was a likely an unconstitutional violation of free speech.  The decision,

TEXAS MEDICAL PROVIDERS PERFORMING

ABORTION SERVICES, et al.,

Plaintiffs,

-vs-                              Case No. A-11-CA-486-SS

DAVID LAKEY, M.D., et al.,

Defendants.

resulted in a Preliminary Injunction against parts of the the law that compel speech on the grounds the law is unconstitutional with respect to free speech.  Here is the eloquence of the Court.

The net result of these provisions is:

(1) a physician is required to say things and take expressive actions with which the physician may not ideologically agree, and which the physician may feel are medically unnecessary;

(2) the pregnant woman must not only passively receive this potentially unwanted speech and expression, but must also actively participate—in the best case by simply signing an election form, and in the worst case by disclosing in writing extremely personal, medically irrelevant facts; and

(3) the entire experience must be memorialized in records that are, at best, semi-private.

In  the absence of a sufficiently weighty government interest, and a sufficiently narrow statute advancing that interest, neither of which have been argued by Defendants, the Constitution does not permit such compulsion.

Many people thought that the Conservative position was the government should not be involved in health care, and that government control of health care was a bad thing.  Well many people must have been wrong.

So Conservatives in general and Mr. Will in particular who are strongly opposed to abortion and strongly in favor of Constitutional rights have a dilemma.  To be consistent they should support this court decision.  But remember, they are Conservatives.  They only support the principles of the Constitution when it is in favor of their positions.  Why, because they have no principles.  For them the Constitution is only a tool to be used or discarded at will depending upon whether or not they need it for their preconceived positions.

Of course the Supreme Court may decide that compulsion of speech is okay, since they are not all that loyal to the Constitution when it mandates against their personal beliefs.