South Dakota is the subject of this New York Times story:
The federal appeals court in St. Louis yesterday blocked the enforcement of a South Dakota law that would have required doctors there to tell women seeking abortions that the procedure would “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”
Laws requiring mandatory counseling for women seeking abortions, and their informed consent to the procedure, are common. The United States Supreme Court in 1992 and federal appeals courts since then have upheld such laws, which typically require that medical information about the procedure and its health risks be provided to women before they can proceed with it.
The defect in the South Dakota law, said the majority in yesterday’s 2-to-1 decision by a panel of United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, was that it supplemented factual information with a value judgment.
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