You could call it a ‘nice try’, if it were

But Planned Parenthood’s argument that abortionists’ “free speech” right not to tell women about the risks of abortion trumps the right of women to be given that information is just incoherent.

The Eighth Circuit decision the other day upholding the woman’s right to know and thus, the informed consent law in South Dakota, marks the triumph of truth over distortion.

NRO Bench Memos points this out today.

The Eighth Circuit rejected the claim that the required information was “theological” or even “philosophical” in nature.  The court said instead that it was “biological”  — that is, scientific and medical.  The Court further held that the “biological” information was settled enough to be made a required part of informed consent.

Go up to the ‘Search’ window on the right and type in ‘South Dakota’ to see some history behind the groundbreaking work of this informed consent bill. Legislators, crisis pregnancy centers and attorneys like Harold Cassidy have established a precedent here, and it’s being followed by many other states who are in various stages of crafting similar legislation.

I did this piece last year on the 1166 bill, which can now move forward. Here’s a snip on what the ‘informed consent’ issue is about, at core.

For every medical procedure you or your minor or disabled loved ones undergo, you have to sign an “informed consent” document stating that you have been made fully aware of the risks of the procedure and that you accept the responsibility for undergoing it anyway. That is, every procedure except abortion. While clinics do get signatures that cover their own liability, the “consent” being given in abortion is patently not “informed” by any definition other than rudimentary.

As the article reports, state legislators studied abortion practices in South Dakota to a degree not before undertaken in any state. Here’s just one snip from the abortion task force report:

“The committees in both the House and Senate heard evidence concerning the magnitude of the interests and rights of pregnant mothers who were adversely affected by abortion…. In every instance they testified about the magnitude of their loss and how that loss adversely affected their lives once they understood that the procedure terminated the life of their existing offspring.”

Once they understood that?

Indeed, South Dakota lawmakers discovered that women generally entered clinics thinking they were carrying a “blob of tissue”, and that the abortion would prevent the child from coming into existence. And nobody told them otherwise. “Those who had counseled a large number of women before and after abortions corroborated the testimony of these women. The picture that emerged from the record before both the House and Senate committees was that it was common for women to sign consents for abortion without being truly informed…. They typically did not understand that the procedure would terminate the life of a human being, and this lack of understanding was further complicated by the fact that abortion providers had misled them at the time of the abortion.”

Now, the Eighth Circuit has ruled that the women’s right to know this fundamental information surpassed the abortionists’ ‘right’ not to tell them, under the guise of free speech.

That AP article reports this:

The appeals court noted that another provision makes it clear that for the purpose of the informed-consent law, human being is defined as “an individual living member of the species of Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation.” 

Planned Parenthood presented no evidence to oppose the common understanding that a fetus is a living organism while in the womb, the court majority said.

You’d think we wouldn’t need an appeals court to decide this. But there you are.