Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker

As promised , Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill Friday that will force women to submit to an ultrasound at least 24 hours before having an abortion and requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. As with the 2012 bill gutting the state's equal pay law , Walker signed the bill gutting Wisconsin women's access to abortion quietly and in private.

Walker joins Republicans in Texas, Ohio and North Carolina in pushing bills attacking a woman's ability to exercise her right to choose, adding delays to the process so that women will have to take more time off work, and closing clinics—in Wisconsin, the requirement that doctors have admitting privileges at local hospitals is expected to close clinics in Milwaukee and Appleton. And of course the delay in this case comes in the form of the forced ultrasound, an unnecessary medical procedure.

The whole admitting privileges thing deserves a second look, as well. It's intended not just to close clinics but to imply to the general public that abortions are unsafe and the doctors who perform them are not good enough to be associated with hospitals. In reality, according to a lawsuit from Planned Parenthood and the ACLU:



Because most abortions do not entail complications that would require a hospital visit, the lawsuit contends, many abortion doctors do not have admitting privileges at a local hospital, which are typically available only to physicians who can provide a minimum number of annual patient referrals.

So basically, Republicans are using the safety of legal abortion as a pretext for limiting it. And Scott Walker, of course, is on board. Though he's hoping you may not notice since he signed the bill into law out of the public eye.