Greensboro-based federal Judge Catherine Eagles was in the news twice last week. Her more high-profile case was federal criminal charges against former Sen. John Edwards, in which she denied motions by Edwards’ attorneys to have the case dismissed.
Earlier in the week, Judge Eagles granted a request for a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks a provision in North Carolina’s new abortion-restriction law that would require women seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound image of their womb within four hours of the procedure. Cal Thomas questions the legal logic:
Let’s apply this twisted reasoning to commercial airline travel. FAA regulations require that passengers receive an oral and video demonstration of the plane’s safety features. Though safety information is clearly written on laminated cards slipped into the pockets of every airline seat, passengers are also shown what to do in the event of an emergency.
Are the First Amendment rights of passengers violated because the government requires them to listen to these instructions? Apparently not; the safety announcement is a “federal regulation,” and as such, passengers must hear it each time they fly. Some of these emergency instructions might be unsettling for passengers to hear — like how to put on your oxygen mask should the plane lose cabin pressure or how to access your floatation device if the plane is headed for a crash landing in water — but again, no one is suggesting their First Amendment “right” not to hear such speech is being violated.
Thomas cites other examples where individuals are forced to “engage in speech compelled by the government,” thus, in his opinion, making Judge Eagles’ decision ‘unabashedly political.’ Thomas worries less about the women who might be harmed by engaging in such speech at abortion clinics than the aborted babies.
