News

By Gudrun Schultz

South Dakota, November 1, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A South Dakota law that would have required doctors to tell women that abortion would end the life of a unique human being was blocked Monday by the St. Louis federal appeals court.

The 2005 law required doctors to inform women seeking abortions, in writing, that theÂÂÂ procedure would “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North and South Dakota filed suit against the state legislature shortly after it was passed, saying the law would infringe on doctors’ First Amendment rights.

The New York Times reported yesterday that the law was rejected by the court for including a “value judgment” with factual information, by making the statement that unborn babies are human.

“It injects an ideological component into the discussion of the unsettled question of when human life begins,” said Planned Parenthood attorney Timothy E. Branson. “This is the first case that really shows where the line is.”

Judge Raymond W. Gruender, who supported the South Dakota legislature, said requiring doctors to disclose the full humanity of the unborn child was simply requiring a statement of “obvious medical fact.” Judge Gruender cast the dissenting vote in the 2-1 decision by the appeals court.

Monday’s ruling upheld a ruling issued June 2005 by Judge Karen E. Schreier of the Federal District Court in Rapid City, South Dakota, which temporarily blocked enforcement of the measure.

“Unlike the truthful, nonmisleading medical and legal information doctors were required to disclose” under the Supreme Court’s 1992 decision in favour of informed consent laws for abortion, Judge Schreier said the South Dakota measure “requires abortion doctors to enunciate the state’s viewpoint on an unsettled medical, philosophical, theological and scientific issue, that is, whether a fetus is a human being.”

“We really don’t think that women are confused about whether they’re carrying a human embryo as opposed to a cat embryo,” said Planned Parenthood lawyer Branson.

Read New York Times coverage:
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/us/31abort.html

See related LifeSiteNews coverage:

“Life Begins At Conception,” Indiana Law Would Inform Women Seeking Abortion
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06021309.html