Article - Judge Rules That South Dakota Doctors Must Say Abortion Ends Life

Taken from: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/20/judge-rules-south-dakota-doctors-say-abortion-ends-life/

**PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ARTICLE IS FROM 2009, AND MAY NO LONGER BE CURRENT IF THE LAW HAS SINCE BEEN REVISED**


SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota -- A federal judge upheld part of a South Dakota law that requires women to be told abortion ends a human life, but struck down disclosures that the procedure increases the likelihood of suicide and that they have an existing relationship with the fetus.



U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier's decision Thursday ends a lawsuit that Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota filed in response to a 2005 informed consent law that required several disclosures to women seeking an abortion.

She sided with the state in ruling that doctors must make the biological disclosure "that the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being."

But Schreier said doctors can provide more information than the language in the statute, including that the term can be used in a biological sense and not ideological.

Schreier ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood by concluding that pregnant women do not need to be told abortion increases the likelihood of suicide or that they have an existing relationship with the fetus.

Both sides claimed victory.

"We're relieved our doctors have the ability to use their best medical judgment to explain and make sure what women understand is biological and factual information and not an ideological mandate from the state," said Mimi Liu, an attorney for Planned Parenthood.

The organization operates the central state of South Dakota's only abortion clinic, which is in Sioux Falls.

Leslee Unruh, founder of the Alpha Center pregnancy counseling center in Sioux Falls, one of the intervening parties in the lawsuit, said she will appeal the suicide and relationship disclosure decisions.

The human being ruling was significant, she said.

"This is the unraveling of Roe (v. Wade). This is a huge, fatal blow to them," Unruh said of the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

Planned Parenthood sued the state after the 2005 law passed and Schreier temporarily prevented it from taking effect. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled that order last year.

Sarah Stoesz, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Assistant Attorney General John Guhin, who argued the case for the state, said Schreier largely followed the appeal court's decision.

Both said they will weigh whether to appeal the issues they lost.