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To hear Rep. Frank Corte tell it, his latest abortion bill is all about women’s rights. House Bill 36 and its Senate companion, Republican Dan Patrick’s SB 182, would require physicians to conduct ultrasounds on pregnant women, then show and explain the results before performing abortions. Doctors would have to report the fetus’s size, heart activity and organ development, along with the presence of legs, arms, fingers and toes. They’d have to make fetal heartbeats audible.

“We believe the woman should have the right to view [the ultrasound],” Corte say. “She should have the right to have the process described to her.”

Corte’s bill is the latest in a rash of so-called informed consent laws passed by state legislatures all over the country. On other medical issues, “informed consent” means providing enough information for patients to make intelligent decisions. Abortion-oriented measures like HB 36 are “turning informed consent on its head,” says Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization. “The whole idea is to pretty much steer the woman away from even choosing abortion.”

Texas already has one of the nation’s more conservative informed consent laws. Since 2003, the state has mandated a 24-hour waiting period between abortion counseling and the procedure. Abortion clinics also must show pregnant women information published by the Department of State Health Services. The brochure, titled “A Woman’s Right to Know,” depicts the development of a fetus at two-week intervals, discusses its ability to feel pain, and uses graphic language to describe certain abortion procedures. (From the description of a dilation and extraction: “The contents of the unborn child’s skull are suctioned out, the bones of the head collapse, and the child is delivered dead.”)

Three states’ informed consent laws require doctors to perform ultrasounds before every abortion and let their pregnant patients view the images. The distinction with HB 36, notes Sarah Wheat, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Austin, is that Corte’s bill would require doctors to show and describe the ultrasound “even if that’s expressly against the client’s wishes.”

Under the bill, “the pregnant woman may avert her eyes from the ultrasound images required to be provided ... and reviewed.” There is no provision for plugging her ears, so women presumably would have to listen to the description and heartbeat (if the fetus is old enough to have one).

“Depending on what that individual woman’s personal situation is, that could make it a pretty emotionally traumatic experience for her,” Wheat says. “It’s one thing to require that they be offered this information,” she says, but mandating it amounts to “callousness and insensitivity.”

The bill contains an exemption for medical emergencies, but not for rape or incest. That was the sticking point for Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry last year, when his state’s legislature passed a bill that, like HB 36, would have required doctors to display and describe ultrasounds. “By forcing the victims of such horrific acts to undergo and view ultrasounds after they have made such a difficult and heartbreaking decision,” Henry’s veto read, “the state victimizes the victim for a second time.”

The Oklahoma Legislature overrode Henry’s veto, but because of pending litigation, the law is under temporary injunction.

Corte argues that his bill isn’t just about women’s rights; it’s also about transparency. “You wouldn’t go in for treatment on a broken foot,” he says, “without an X-ray.”