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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place a Kentucky restriction requiring doctors to show and describe ultrasound images to women seeking an abortion, turning away a challenge arguing that the measure violates the free speech rights of physicians. The justices declined without comment to hear an appeal by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of a lower court ruling that upheld the law after a federal judge previously had struck it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of free speech. (12/9)

The case was brought by the only licensed abortion clinic in the state and three doctors who work there. They challenged a 2017 law that requires doctors to give a detailed description of fetal ultrasound images, including “the presence of external members and internal organs.” Doctors are also required to make the fetal heartbeat audible if they can. This ordinarily takes place, the challengers’ petition seeking review said, while the woman “lies half-naked on the examination table with her feet in stirrups, and usually with a probe inside her vagina.” The law specifies that women may avert their eyes and ask that the volume of the audio of the heartbeat be turned down or off. (Liptak, 12/9)

Monday's ruling allows H.B. 2, Kentucky's forced, narrated ultrasound law, to take effect. The physicians at Kentucky's last abortion clinic will be forced to subject every patient to their ultrasound images, a detailed description of those images, and the sounds of the fetal heart tones prior to an abortion -- even if the patient objects or is covering their eyes and blocking their ears, and even if the physician believes that doing so will cause harm to the patient. (Dwyer, 12/9)

The one-line order, refusing to review a lower court decision, created no nationwide precedent, but suggests that states may be gaining greater leeway in regulating women’s rights to end their pregnancies. As typical in denied appeals, it was unsigned and included no explanation. It takes four votes on the nine-justice court to accept a case for review, and five to decide it. A federal-district court in Louisville, Ky., blocked the law from taking effect in 2017, finding that compelling doctors to express the state government’s antiabortion “ideology” violated the First Amendment and that, particularly for women who were victims of sexual assault, “appears to inflict psychological harm.” (Bravin, 12/9)

The law had been upheld by the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals, but that ruling was on hold pending the Supreme Court appeal. "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, relevant to informed consent, even if those disclosures relate to unborn life and have the effect of persuading the patient not to have an abortion," the appeals court held in its ruling. (De Vogue, 12/9)

With its refusal to review the lower court decision, the Supreme Court "has rubber-stamped extreme political interference in the doctor-patient relationship,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “This law is not only unconstitutional, but as leading medical experts and ethicists explained, deeply unethical." (Ollstein, 12/9)

Jeanne Mancini, the president of March for Life, celebrated the court's decision on Monday. "Women facing an unexpected pregnancy deserve to have as much medically and technically accurate information as possible when they are making what could be the most important decision of their life," the statement said. (Smith, 12/9)

Kentucky's 2017 ultrasound law marked the beginning of a wave of anti-abortion legislation that began after Republicans seized control of the state House of Representatives.  During this year's legislative session, four major bills were passed to try to restrict or eliminate abortion in Kentucky. Some were blocked by the courts. (Kenning, 12/9)

[The law] was signed by Gov. Matt Bevin, an anti-abortion Republican who lost his bid for re-election last month. "This is a HUGE win for the pro-life movement!" the Kentucky GOP tweeted on Monday, thanking Bevin and Republican lawmakers. "This decision by SCOTUS to allow the lower court ruling to stand is a victory for the unborn!" (Li, 12/9)

In March, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in June Medical Services LLC v. Gee, which challenges a Louisiana law that requires abortion-performing physicians to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. (Kruzel, 12/9)

Government funding for Missouri Planned Parenthood clinics is at stake in a lawsuit set to be argued before the state Supreme Court on Tuesday. State attorneys are asking Supreme Court judges to back the Republican-led Legislature's decision to block funding from Planned Parenthood. The Attorney General's Office appealed to the high court after a lower court in June ruled the move was unconstitutional. (Ballentine, 12/10)

The Justice Department on Monday said that the man accused of killing three people when he opened fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado in 2015 has been indicted on federal charges, including some that could carry the death penalty. Robert Lewis Dear Jr. faces 68 counts in the new indictment, mostly alleged violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which the Justice Department says protects people seeking and providing care at reproductive health facilities. The indictment also includes three counts of using a firearm during a crime of violence that results in a death where the killing is a murder. (Berman, 12/9)