Moments after Amy Hagstrom Miller heard the news earlier this month — that a panel of federal judges had directed Texas to immediately enforce the most controversial tenet of the state’s new abortion sonogram law — her phone started ringing. It was the doctors who perform abortions at the five Whole Woman’s Health clinics she founded in Texas, confirming that they had to start showing their pregnant patients the image of the fetus and playing the fetal heartbeat.

For Ms. Hagstrom Miller and many abortion and women’s health providers statewide, performing these sonogram-related actions is an affront — to patients who have thought long and hard about their decisions, and to doctors who believe they are not medically necessary. The constitutionality of the practice, which supporters say is the only way to ensure that women know the consequences of their decision, is still being challenged in court.

But the sonogram itself — which abortion clinics say they already perform and show to any woman who asks — is far from the most complicating element of the new law. This past fall, doctors were required to start performing a transvaginal sonogram at least 24 hours ahead of an abortion, a shift they say has had frustrating consequences for clinics and patients.

Abortion opponents say the rationale behind the 24-hour delay is simple. Abortion should not be held to a lower standard than any other surgical procedure — where patients have a doctor’s visit to learn the explicit details of their condition one day and have the medical procedure on another.