More on 8th Circuit opinion on abortion

A week before the elections, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion on the South Dakota lawsuit filed last year by Planned Parenthood to stop an ‘informed consent’ act from being enforced (see below). The parties named in that suit issued a statement about that 2-1 opinion (see post just below) that contains the essence of the whole South Dakota effort that puts them at Ground Zero in the pro-life battle with the nation’s abortion movement.

There’s a new addendum to that statement, released by the Attorney for the Intervenors, Harold Cassidy. The Intervenors are crisis pregnancy centers, counselors, physicians and South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds. Here’s what they want the public to know:

There is a further matter that we believe merits comment at this time. For thirty years or so, abortion clinics and abortion doctors have been given standing in the courts to litigate what they claim to be the interests of women. During that time, those clinics and abortion doctors have never raised the fundamental constitutional rights of the pregnant mothers to maintain their relationship with their children; or their right to make informed decisions for their children. Nor have they sought to protect the women’s right to their health by disclosing many of the risks that abortion poses to the mothers.

It is clear that the personal interests and philosophies of these clinics and abortion doctors conflict with these very interests.

We think it is time to ask the courts to recognize these conflicts, and acknowledge that these clinics and doctors do not advance the mother’s most important interests. They only terminate the mother’s right to the relationship.

This argument has not been raised before. South Dakota marks new territory in pro-life litigation and legislation. In the 33 years of abortion on demand since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, America did not know that pregnant women had fundamental constitutional rights to their relationship with their unborn children, and rights to make informed decisions about medical procedures for their unborn children and for themselves, for their own health.

This requires informed consent. They have to obtain it before giving your child an aspirin, for goodness sake.

The Roe Court actually assumed that informed consent would be part of the “choice” to undergo abortion. Who knew?!

Anyone familiar with the actual ruling.

One of the six false assumptions of Roe — listed in the abortion task force report — is:

that there would be a normal healthy physician-patient relationship in which the doctor would impart pertinent information, and that decisions would be made through consultation between the physician and patient. “All these factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.” (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. at 153)(emphasis added).

The abortion practice in America has strayed so far from even what Roe imagined, the time has come for the new look at it in the courts. The statement in response to Monday’s 8th Circuit Court ruling says:

the opinion in this case exposes many of the weaknesses of Planned Parenthood’s arguments and thus, presents an unusual opportunity to bring the case quickly before the United States Supreme Court to address issues it has never addressed before. (emphasis added)

That’s the magnitude of South Dakota. Be part of the effort there. It’s this simple.