Last updated on 2011.12.11
The Eighth Circuit Court's September 2 ruling mostly upholding most of South Dakota's 2005 abortion advisory law was a step backward for women's rights and the doctor-patient relationship. The Eighth Circuit put back into effect the "relationship advisory," the requirement that doctors make a non-medical ideological statement to their patients about an abstract Constitutional relationship between a woman and her fetus.
On top of that, the Eighth Circuit upheld the lower court's ruling that the state can force doctors to tell women that fetuses are "whole" and "separate" human beings. Both terms, especially the latter, seem absurd as long as an umbilical cord ties that being to a woman whom our state apparently considers its ward.
The only small victory for defenders of limited government and rationality was the Eighth Circuit's agreement with the lower court in rejecting the "suicide advisory," in which the State of South Dakota tried to force doctors to parrot bogus science. The state failed on this count for the same reasons it failed to avoid a court injunction against most of its 2011 round of draconian abortion restrictions: it crafted a sloppy law. In requiring doctors to discuss "all known medical risks" of abortion, the 2005 South Dakota Legislature failed to define known and risk. On known, the court takes the word at its common meaning of generally recognized. The court reviews the scientific literature, finds anything but general recognition of a causal link between abortion and suicide, and concludes that it could only uphold the suicide advisory if it erased the word known from the statute. Therefore...
The district court did not err in concluding that the suicide advisory's warning of "known" risks compels untruthful speech by doctors. An untruthful, misleading, or irrelevant advisory violates both a patient's due process rights to voluntary abortion and a doctor's First Amendment rights [Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, 2011.09.02, p. 15].
On risk, the Eighth Circuit upheld the lower court's reasoning that the South Dakota Legislature was playing doctor without a license:
...in the context of this statute a court cannot assume that the legislature had any one of several competing definitions of medical risk clearly in mind. The suicide advisory appears in the same subsection of § 7 that requires doctors to "descri[be] . . . [all] statistically significant risk factors to which the pregnant woman would be subjected" by abortion. S.D.C.L. § 34-23A-10.1(1)(e). The statute does not define "risk factor." After reviewing expert testimony, however, the district court concluded that "a 'risk factor' refers to a predisposing condition that a patient has before a procedure" rather than a risk resulting from a procedure. 650 F. Supp. 2d at 981 (emphasis added). The statute thus used "risk factor" in a manner inconsistent with its medical meaning, leaving doctors "to guess as to the meaning the legislature intended to give to the phrase."
...The district court concluded that the legislative drafters "may not have fully understood the meaning of this phrase as used in the medical profession" [Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, 2011, pp. 12&ndash13].
But our Legislature's errors are little cause for jubilation. Even in their fouling of scientific language, the South Dakota Legislature is still succeeding in its game of demeaning women, intruding on the doctor-patient relationship, and throwing up obstacle after obstacle to obtaining a legal medical procedure.
"South Dakota Legislature is still succeeding in its game of demeaning women"
Cory, it is the pro-abortion left that is demeaning to women.
Again, Steve, the left is not pro-abortion. Furthermore, we do not demean women. We (I presume now to speak for your hated left) say, "Abortion is legal. It's your right. You make your own choice, without government interference." How does that position demean women?
Apparently we only demean women if we treat them like equal members of society with equal rights. "Respecting women" means treating women like feebleminded baby factories who need Menfolk and the state to run their lives. Much more "respect" like that, and women won't have the right to vote or own property, either.
"How does that position demean women?"
Making women suffer through an abortion because they are only sex objects, and not wives, mothers, and humans. As female Priscilla Coleman puts it:
Any interpretation of the available research that does not acknowledge the strong evidence now available in the professional literature represents a conscious choice to ignore basic principles of scientific integrity. The human fallout from such a choice: misinformed professionals, millions of women struggling in isolation to make sense of a past abortion, thousands who will seek an abortion today without the benefit of known risks, and millions who will make this often life-altering decision tomorrow without the basic right of informed consent. In publishing Major’s opinion without soliciting other voices on the topic, the Washington Post has perpetuated a serious injustice.
Upgrading the baby to the status of a person is not demeaning to a women. If a woman wants to dump her own baby she is demeaning her own baby. But the pro abortion people realize that that type of mother is not fit to raise a kid anyways. Adoption is still a choice that does not demean either the woman or the baby. That is why adoption is not suicidal or bring regrets of a lesser nature either.
The Republican retrograde legislature might as well also require Doctors to tell women, "Rapists have rights too." And of course, "Barefoot and pregnant" should be worked into the message as well. To make it easier for doctors, they should also be required to show photos of 20-year old fetal alcohol children for ever being led by the hand as the smile randomly and irrelevantly. Doctors noting how lovable the 195 pound child really is.
Doug,
1) Rapists are not given rights. Do we convict children for the crimes of their parents?
2) There are plenty of shoes in America.
3) What character would consider "pregnant" to be a curse.
4) So who would you appoint to the pre-birth death panel?
So many non-sequiturs, so little time...
Or is it a difference in worldview?
No, pretty obvious non-sequiturs, straw men, and red herrings.
Steve, our side is not forcing women to do anything. The South Dakota Legislature is. We leave it to women to act on their intelligence and autonomy in their best interest. We do not presume that they need state-dictated guidance beyond the advice they seek from their own trusted doctors. South Dakota law on abortion thus demeans women in ways that I and better feminists do not.