A few weeks back, Rep. Steve Harshman (R-Natrona) told his colleagues in the House, “when we debate on this floor, there is nothing in Mason’s [Manual of Legislative Procedures], the Constitution, our oath of office, the Wyoming Manual of Legislative Procedure, or the rules that say we have to be 100 percent accurate. There is nothing that says we have to tell the truth.”
That’s true. Willful lies intended to deceive fellow legislators about the content and consequences of a bill are permissible. But they are not harmless.
Whether willful or unintentional, they contribute to bad policy by withholding knowledge of the facts that legislators need in order to make good decisions. They damage the reputations of the officer who tells them and of the government as a whole. Most seriously, lies gnaw at the conscience and hollow out the soul.
Harshman’s words came to mind as I watched the House debate HB 64 Chemical abortions-ultrasound requirement. This legislation would require Wyoming abortionists actually to look at the embryo that they wish to abort in order to determine that it is still an embryo rightly situated.
FDA guidelines proscribe chemical abortions after the tenth week of gestation (LMP 70 days). Nor are chemical abortions safe for women who have an ectopic pregnancy and other complications. HB 64 requires doctors to rule out contraindications via ultrasound before prescribing abortion drugs.
When you consider that 64 percent of abortions in the United States are chemical abortions, these reasonable and necessary precautions become a matter of compassion, as Speaker Chip Neiman (R-Hulette) said in introducing the bill.
Opposition to the bill rose immediately in the persons of Rep. Mike Yin (D-Jackson) and Ellissa Campbell (R-Natrona). Both zeroed in on the provision that the pregnant woman be given the opportunity to “view the fetal heart motion or hear the heartbeat of the unborn baby if the heartbeat is audible.” This, they both asserted, would require a transvaginal ultrasound—as opposed to a transabdominal ultrasound—and would be the very definition of governmental overreach.
It was a very persuasive argument. And it swayed at least one libertarian-leaning representative to vote against the bill. However, I don’t think it is truthful.
The word, “transvaginal” appears nowhere in HB 64. Rather, the ultrasound required in the bill “shall be of a quality consistent with standard medical practice in the community.”
The NIH website provides a good summary of standard medical practice. It stipulates that for the first 14 weeks, either transvaginal or transabdominal ultrasounds “will provide the most accurate estimate of gestational age.” Neither standard medical practice nor HB 64 forces anyone into a transvaginal ultrasound.
This becomes even more clear when HB 64 stipulates the purpose of the ultrasound. It is required to determine the “age, length and head diameter of the unborn baby.” A non-intrusive ultrasound can do this as well as a transvaginal ultrasound. Only “if the heartbeat is audible” on that ultrasound is the doctor required to offer the pregnant woman an opportunity to see or hear it.
If this were not clear enough already, an amendment could have been proposed to make it clear. But neither Yin or Campbell offered such an amendment—nor did anyone else. Instead, Campbell offered two different amendments that would have made both kinds of ultrasound entirely optional. She did this while claiming that “there are other ways to determine gestational age.”
For the record, there are only two other ways of determining gestational age: pelvic exam or LMP. The pelvic exam is useless until the pregnancy begins to “show” long after the 70-day LMP cutoff date. And if the LMP is accurately reported (about 18 percent are not), the method is accurate only to within 36 days.
More troubling, still, is that these amendments provided no way to rule out ectopic pregnancy in any event.
Truthfulness in debate is the cornerstone of just legislation. Whether it is required by parliamentary procedure or simply by the heart that is honestly seeking the truth matters little.
What matters to the people of Wyoming is that laws are debated in a factual way. It matters that colleagues providing information can be trusted to know what they are talking about, and that when the session gavels out for the evening, everyone’s conscience is at rest.
Let us hope that debate in the senate is more truthful. That would help our legislators best care for women and their unborn babies.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com.
