How informed the choice?

The legal wrangling over South Dakota’s informed consent law has been both bizarre and revealing. At core, it’s a battle between the powerful abortion movement which operates under the mantle of ‘choice’, and the pro-life movement which is working mightily to give women enough information to make an informed choice.

When South Dakota legislators passed a law requiring abortion providers to inform women that they are carrying not a blob of tissue, but an already existing human being, among other highly relevant facts and the possiblerisks ass ociated with the procedure. Planned Parenthood got an injunction to prevent that law’s enactment by convincing judge Karen Schreier that such disclosure violates the abortionists’ rights of free speech. Schreier decided that outweighed the women’s right to information.

That dragged out in appeals, and in June 2008 the full 8th Circuit court ruled that the informed consent requirement did not constitute ideological language (as Planned Parenthood contended) but biological fact, and therefore should be upheld as law and provided to women in abortion clinics. It wasn’t. Planned Parenthood ignored the ruling and continued business as usual.

Finally, Judge Schreier upheld the provision for informed consent. At least…some of it.

In an August 20 decision, Judge Karen Schreier of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota, Southern Division, upheld the law’s provision that the doctor must inform a woman that the abortion will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

However, according to the Alliance Defense Fund, she overturned the law’s provision requiring the woman to be informed of her existing relationship with the unborn child and that an “increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide” is a “known medical risk” of abortion…

ADF Senior Legal Counsel Steven H. Aden commented on the court ruling, saying “A woman’s life is worth more than Planned Parenthood’s bottom line, so we’re pleased the abortion industry failed in its attempt to strike down this law.”

“We agree with the decision of the court to allow South Dakota women to be informed of the indisputable fact that her baby is a human being.

“We find it incredible, however, for the court to determine that the law cannot acknowledge that a ‘pregnant woman has an existing relationship with that unborn human being’ because some human beings are somehow not ‘persons.’

“The court ruled that a woman has more of a relationship with the abortionist than her preborn baby.  All human beings are persons,” Aden said in a press release.

This is destined for the Supreme Court.