Madfloridian's Journal - South Dakota abortion doctors now required to spout right wing religious ideology to patients.

(I am reposting this with a corrected subject line. It is an important topic, and I put the wrong state.)

I was really surprised to see how effective the anti-choice crowd has been. I know that in Florida they have succeeded in closing many women's clinics, and forcing long travel and long waits with long lectures.

In South Dakota there is only one clinic in the state, and abortions are performed only once a week with only one of three doctors rotating weekly.

This law was okayed last week by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The 8th Circuit Court Okays South Dakota’s Political Interference in Women’s Personal Medical Decision-Making

The 700 or so women each year who have an abortion in South Dakota go to the only abortion clinic in the state, where one doctor performs abortions once a week (three different doctors rotate that shift). After last Friday’s 8th Circuit Court decision in Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota v. Rounds (PDF), those three doctors are now forced, by law, to tell each of these women that “An abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” This restriction is just one more tactic that anti-choice forces have used to chip away at the constitutional right to abortion in what is already one of the most restricted states.

The ACLU believes that a woman needs medically accurate information to make the best choices for herself and her circumstances, without undue pressure. She should be able to trust that the advice she receives from her physician reflects what her physician believes is in her best interest, not something that her physician has been forced to say by the government.

Clearly those in the South Dakota legislature who voted to pass the law,and the 8th Circuit judges who voted to uphold it, disagree.

The law also forces a doctor to tell his or her patient that she “has an existing relationship with that unborn human being” and if she has an abortion, “her existing relationship and her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated.”

Who wrote the law? An anti-choice activist.

If the law’s language sounds like anti-choice rhetoric, it’s because it was written by an anti-choice activist — the lawyer Harold J. Cassidy. He tried a similar tactic in New Jersey a few years ago by bringing a medical malpractice lawsuit against a physician who performed an abortion and who didn’t tell his patients what those three rotating doctors in South Dakota are now forced to tell theirs: that abortion terminates the life of a separate, unique human being.

It truly alarms me when the courts get involved in telling doctors what to say to their patients. There are so many dangers when religious views are turned into law. We have already forgotten how outraged we were when late-term abortions were banned. Doctors who performed them could be given up to two years in jail, even to save the life of the mother.

How it was easy to get the ban on late term abortions...our party went along.

Yes votes in the Senate:

John Breaux, Harry Byrd, Kent Conrad, Tom Daschle, Byron Dorgan, Fritz Hollings, Tim Johnson, Mary Landrieu, Patrick Leahy, Blanche Lincoln, Miller (GA), Ben Nelson, Pryor AK, Harry Reid.

There were 63 yes votes in the House.

The bill from 2003 read like this:

Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003: Vote to pass a bill banning a medical procedure, which is commonly known as "partial-birth" abortion. The procedure would be allowed only in cases in which a women's life is in danger, not for cases where a women's health is in danger. Those who performed this procedure, would face fines and up to two years in prison, the women to whom this procedure is performed on are not held criminally liable.
Reference: Bill sponsored by Santorum, R-PA; Bill S.3 ; vote number 2003-530 on Oct 2, 2003

The Supreme Court last year took it further. They removed the part about saving the life of the woman.

Supreme Court allows late term abortion ban

In a 5-to-4 decision announ-ced Wednesday, the high court upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The move comes nearly seven years after the Supreme Court declared a similar Nebraska law unconstitutional because it lacked an exception to protect a woman's health.

This time a different lineup of justices upheld a federal version of essentially the same law, even though it does not contain a so-called health exception that would permit the banned abortion procedure when a physician deemed it necessary to safeguard a woman's health.

The decision marks the first time since the landmark abortion precedent Roe v. Wade in 1973 that the nation's highest court has ruled in a way that places considerations of a woman's health as secondary to efforts by the government to restrict abortion procedures performed prior to fetal viability. That shift could embolden antiabortion forces to try to enact more restrictions at the state level.

Writing for the majority in Wednesday's decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the lack of a health exception does not automatically render the statute unconstitutional. "Whether the act creates significant health risks for women has been a contested factual question," he writes. "Both sides have medical support for their position."

Whether the act has risks for the mother? Of course it does.

The court placed the woman's life as secondary. A two party system really does matter, and standing up against the inclusion of religious dogma into our laws....really does matter. We forget so quickly the dangers of not standing up for what we believe.

And the fight continues.