Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell wanted to amend a

mandatory pre-abortion ultrasound bill by requiring

rectal exams and cardiac stress tests before allowing

prescriptions for erectile dysfunction medication. The

amendment failed but brought national media attention

to the law. Six of the seven women in the 40-member

senate voted for her amendment. All of them Democrats.

(Courtesy Sen. Howell's office)

In case you missed it, the governor and legislature of Virginia took a couple of steps back last week after being pummeled locally and in the national media for trying to force women seeking abortions to undergo an invasive ultrasound procedure that some critics rightly labeled "state-sponsored rape." Just a day later, a bill that would designate fertilized eggs as persons with the full constitutional rights and privileges of the already-born, was taken off the legislative docket, which killed it for the rest of 2012.

The combination of ridicule, protests, phone calls, emails, demonstrations, rowdy public hearings and three weeks' worth of corrosive attention on blogs, social network sites and in the traditional media had a powerful impact on lawmakers who are used to working their statutory magic in quiet. It took the catalyst of an angry state senator with a serrated sense of humor and fairness plus a lot of energy by a lot of activists to bring about this result.

Unfortunately, the win gets only a half-hurrah because it was only a half-retreat. The Virginia General Assembly now plans to pass a harassing, medically unnecessary law that requires physicians to perform an external, jelly-on-the-belly ultrasound. Women would be allowed to refuse the more invasive—transvaginal—procedure, but physicians would still have to offer it. Bottom line? No ultrasound, no abortion. This isn't about good health care. It's the consequence of a noxious, religiously inspired ideology that has no rightful place as legislation. Like its predecessor, it should be knuckled under.

If the new bill passes, Virginia will become the eighth state to require pre-abortion ultrasounds. The others are Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. North Carolina and Oklahoma also have such requirements on the books, but they are in abeyance pending a court decision. Ultrasound bills are in the pipeline in Pennsylvania and Iowa, the latter having removed the “transvaginal” requirement already.

The Alabama Senate health committee on Thursday approved a bill explicitly adding a transvaginal requirement to its existing mandatory ultrasound law. It would require that the ultrasound show fetal heartbeat and body organs. In the first 12 weeks of pregnancy during which the vast majority of abortions are performed, the only way to do that is transvaginally.

But even without that the ultrasounds are an intrusion in the physician-patient relationship and women's right to make their own choices without interference from ideologues seeking to punish sexually active women by forcing them to "accept the consequences" if they become pregnant. These ideologues want to legislate choice and privacy away, and since they haven't succeeded in getting a reversal of Roe v. Wade, they've resorted to various flanking efforts with substantial success.

Relentless. Persistent. Never letting a court decision or legislative failure stop them from seeking yet another way to undermine women's reproductive rights and their right to privacy. That's the anti-choice forces' secret technique. They don't give up.

As a consequence, they have nibbled away at those legal rights since five minutes after Roe v. Wade emerged from the Supreme Court. Each year, for young women, for low-income women, for women in smaller towns and many regions, getting an abortion has become harder and harder. Not as much for well-informed, affluent, take-no-guff women, but laws like those requiring ultrasounds are efforts to squeeze them as well. As the Guttmacher Institute has reported, last year saw a record number of state laws making abortion more difficult to obtain or create statutory harassment of women seeking one.

Most of those pressing for these laws are also not keen on freely available contraception or anything other than abstinence-based sex education. Not just for themselves, but for everybody else, too. Their authoritarian, anti-woman agenda is clear.

Their relentlessness requires ours. Every action of theirs requires three reactions from us.

First is a direct assault, like the one launched on Virginia over any bill that chips away at reproductive and privacy rights.

Second is targeted campaigns to get rid of the worst anti-choice legislators, which has the added benefit of unseating politicians who are bad on an entire range of issues. Direct action coupled with electoral action. That pretty much applies to every worthwhile campaign in American history, despite the claims of some people that only one or the other of these ever delivers any real results. Both are required. They always have been.

Third, most difficult of all and also an element of every successful reform campaign in history, is launching initiatives to reverse anti-choice laws now on the books. Always being in defense mode is not good politics and not good for the soul. It too often leads to despair and despair creates apathy and apathy kills activism. Self-defense requires more than blocking our opponents' punches.

There are plenty of places we might begin. Those awful personhood bills, for instance. But since we're already engaged in Nos. 1 and 2 on ultrasounds, this would be good place to start with No. 3 as well. Minimizing the number of new ultrasound laws that get enacted and reversing ones already on the books won't be easy but may not be as difficult as it would first appear.

Medical authorities agree that ultrasounds are unnecessary for first trimester abortions. They simply aren't needed. These laws are, as the Guttmacher Institute so rightly puts it, "a veiled attempt to personify the fetus and dissuade a woman from obtaining an abortion." Not coincidentally, ultrasounds also increase the cost of an abortion. This is especially true in Texas, where the ultrasound is required to be given, not by a technician, but by the same physician who will perform the abortion.

Anti-choice forces are hard at work trying to spread that model. Low-income women already face a financial squeeze if they seek to terminate a pregnancy. Thanks to the Hyde Amendment—an early post-Roe v. Wade success of the forced-birthers—a woman can only obtain a Medicaid abortion in the majority of states if her pregnancy results from rape or incest, or if carrying to term threatens her life.

The ultrasound laws and a host of others are causing a good deal of pain for women who seek a medical procedure that has been legal for 39 years. But whether it's forcing clinics to adopt unnecessary standards, making women undergo unnecessary examinations or forcing them to listen to often inaccurate anti-abortion lecturing, these laws are all devoted to prosecuting a war against women's right to choose and their right to privacy.

So, to all those who spoke out against, sent emails, signed petitions and made phone calls to Virginia officials in the past few days, good job. But that was just one half-victory in what, lately, has been a lot of defeats. And the forced-birthers rarely give us a chance to catch our breath.

Some progressives have called the recent fights over abortion and birth control a distraction from the real issues. It's certainly true that we shouldn't have to be fighting on this front. These matters should have resolved long ago. But to say the fight is not worth it seriously misjudges. These matters are at the very heart of freedom for women. The authoritarian forces who have been working for decades chipping away at this freedom are making considerable headway. Stopping them will not be accomplished by ignoring them. Nor by being overly relieved at winning half-victories.