Judge Sparks just released his decision in the Texas sonogram case.  Check here for background.

The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc’s Mad Dawg Legal Team (Bubba,  Lil’ Bubba, and Mrs. Lil’ Bubba) is sorting through it right now and will have comments later.

Here’s the decision if you want to wade through it.  Sparks has issued a temporary injunction on the bill.  He gave the plaintiffs the right to proceed as a class action lawsuit.  That’s good news.

Okay, he held three parts of the bill to be unconstitutionally vague.  He also held that forcing a doctor to read the state mandated script was a violation of the doctor’s First Amendment rights.  That’s great news.

My favorite quotes from the injunction —

Page 20 footnote:   2 It is ironic that many of the same people who zealously defend the state’s righteous duty to become intimately involved in a woman’s decision to get an abortion are also positively scandalized at the government’s gross overreaching in the area of health care.

Page 22 on forcing a woman to listen to a description of the fetus:   the State of Texas wishes to force a particular message upon a captive, and potentially unwilling, audience. While the Court acknowledges the intuitive logic of Plaintiffs’ argument, and there surely are limits to the government’s power to impose whatever message it desires, on whomever it likes, under any circumstances it desires, those limits seem fairly undefined, at least as applied to this case.

Page 50:  The Act does not compel physicians to apprise women of the risks inherent in abortion, inform the women of available alternatives, and facilitate access to additional information if the women wish to review it before making their decisions; existing Texas law already compels such speech by physicians, in conformity with Casey. Instead, the Act compels physicians to advance an ideological agenda with which they may not agree, regardless of any medical necessity, and irrespective of whether the pregnant women wish to listen. These factual differences persuade the Court that Casey does not foreclose Plaintiffs’ First Amendment challenge to the Act.

In short, you could not wipe the grin off my face with a stick of dynamite tonight.  If State Senator Dan Patrick isn’t limping this evening it’s because he hasn’t read and/or  doesn’t understood this injunction.   He’s been kneecapped.  And he’s been kneecapped in a way that will hold up to the Supreme Court.