Legal maneuvering in South Dakota

How political. One week before the elections, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals issues a ruling against the informed consent law in South Dakota.

Some background…

Before you can receive just about any medical procedure, you have to sign an ‘informed consent’ legally covering the practitioner by acknowledging that you have been informed of all the ramifications and health risks of what you or your child (underage minor) are about to undergo.

However, as major as abortion is to the woman and the human life she is carrying, standard informed consent procedures are not followed by abortionists and their clinic workers. But…so as not to jump to that hasty conclusion, the South Dakota legislature set up a task force in 2005 to study the procedure and the effects of abortion in that state.

Here’s what they found:

During the 2005 legislative session, the South Dakota Legislature passed HB 1166 that expressly found that “all abortions, whether surgically or chemically induced, terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

First of all, that’s a ‘stop the presses’ legislative statement in America. Now continue…

The Act amends SDCL 34-23A-10.1 to require a physician to disclose in writing to a pregnant mother “that the aobrtion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

This was groundbreaking legislation, the first of its kind since Roe.

“Human being” is used in the biological sense as a whole member of the species Homo sapiens (SDCL 34-23A-1(4)).

That is key. For any abortion supporter to continue to use euphemisms for the unborn child, especially to support ending its life, is to deny that this life is of the species Homo sapiens, which simply translates to ‘human being.’

So what’s the footnote right at this point in the task force report? The fact that on the passage of the 1166 ‘informed consent’ bill, Planned Parenthood immediately filed a preliminary injunction to stop its enforcement…

in order to preserve the status quo while the case filed by Planned Parenthood challenging the Act is pending in the Federal District Court. (emphasis added)

That same footnote goes on to state:

It was of some interest to members of the Task Force to learn that while the Federal District Court entered the Order imposing the preliminary injunction, the Court did so on the basis that the Court sought to protect Planned Parenthood’s First Amendment right of free speech which they asserted in that case. The Court recognized there was a conflict between these asserted rights of the abortion providers and the interests of the pregnant mothers which were sought to be protected by the Act. We note that the Court attempted to weigh the harm to the personal rights of the abortion providers against the harms to the interests of the pregnant mothers, and the Court chose to protect the interests of the abortion providers as a way to preserve the status quo while the case is litigated in the District Court.

That District Court ruled today, a week before the elections. Here’s how LifeNews recapped it:

The modifications, approved by the state legislature in 2005, would have abortion practitioners tell women that abortions end a human life and come with a plethora of medical and psychological problems.

But Planned Parenthood claimed that would infringe on the free speech rights of abortion practitioners by making them tell women the truth about abortion’s problems.

The law was scheduled to take effect law year, but U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier granted the Planned Parenthood injunction Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and the Dakotas sought. She issued the ruling saying she believed Planned Parenthood would prevail in its case and agreed that first amendment rights would be improperly trumped.

Did you get that? U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier decided that the first amendment rights of the abortionists trumped the interests and health of the pregnant mothers. The task force report lays out, in 71 pages, the harm to the pregnant mother, and it details the reasons to establish — at the very least — an ‘informed consent’ law.

I keep wondering why the “choice” movement is so dead against it.