How can you call it choice…
…when there’s no information about what you’re choosing between? That’s why I’ve always wondered why the ‘choice’ movement so fiercely fights off laws that require the same informed consent standards as other medical procedures. They strike it down every time. Until South Dakota.
Last year, the South Dakota legislature passed HB 1166, the informed consent bill, requiring abortionists and their clinics to give women the correct medical information about the procedure they’re considering, and its ramifications, just as any other medical procedure is explained. Take a look at your aspirin bottle warnings, for goodness sake. But Planned Parenthood was in court immediately and got injunctive relief that kept the informed consent law from going into practice, while they fought it out in court.
Who were they fighting? The crisis pregnancy center workers who had had enough of the devastation they were seeing in the lives of women once they realized that their abortions had taken the lives of their unborn children.
This is about information, folks. Who’s afraid of that? The abortion movement. Why? That’s the right question.
Now, the Circuit Court of Appeals where this case wound up is going to hear it again.
A South Dakota law to make sure women aren’t denied information from abortion facilities about abortion’s risks and alternatives will get a second chance at a federal appeals court. The 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals prevented changes in the law from going into effect last October but has agreed to a rehearing of the case.
The state legislature approved modifications to the bill in 2005 that would have abortion practitioners tell women that abortions end a human life and come with a plethora of medical and psychological problems.
Which is the truth.
But Planned Parenthood claimed making them tell women the truth about abortion’s problems would infringe on the free speech rights of abortion practitioners.
Get that? The ‘free speech rights of abortion practitioners’ to say as little as they want trumped the rights of the women and their unborn children, according to Planned Parenthood and U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier who ruled in their favor.
A three judge panel of the 8th Circuit let stand a federal injunction against implementing the changes but the court agreed Tuesday to rehear the case. As a result, the full 11-member court, based in St. Louis, will hear arguments on the case in April.
Attorney General Larry Long told the Associated Press he was “delighted” by the “rare” decision as federal appeals courts only rehear a case about two percent of the time.
Which proves how strong this case is. For the background on the groundbreaking work being done in South Dakota, click on the ‘abortion’ category on the right and go back. It’s all there. It’s also here, in the South Dakota legislature’s Task Force to Study Abortion.
