10-week old human fetus (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Posted on 08/23/2009 1:32:26 PM PDT by NYer
Women seeking an abortion must be told that the procedure ends a human life, a federal judge ruled Thursday, upholding part of a South Dakota law.
U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier said doctors must disclose to pregnant women that “the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”
But she rejected other portions of the state’s 2005 informed consent law that required doctors to tell women that abortion increases the risk of suicide and that they have “an existing relationship with that unborn human being.”
10-week old human fetus (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
“A legal relationship requires two people. The United States Constitution does not recognize an unborn embryo or fetus as a ‘person,’ in the legal sense,” Schreier stated.
Assistant Attorney General John Guhin praised the ruling, commenting, “I think the most important part of the statute has been upheld.”
Leslee Unruh, founder of the Alpha Center pregnancy counseling center in Sioux Falls, plans to appeal the judge’s decisions on the suicide and relationship disclosures but still sees the overall ruling as a major step for the pro-life cause.
“This is the unraveling of Roe [v. Wade],” Unruh told The Associated Press. “We take the human being part and go to the Supreme Court and put the human relationship in. That knocks out Roe v. Wade.”
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota filed a lawsuit against the state in 2005, alleging that the language in the law was “ideologically charged” and unconstitutional.
The informed consent law was blocked by Schreier from going into effect until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit lifted the preliminary injunction in July 2008.
Planned Parenthood called Schreier’s latest decision a “major victory” despite the judge’s decision to uphold the “human being” portion of the law.
Just weeks before this week’s ruling, the state Department of Health sent Planned Parenthood a notice warning that South Dakota’s only abortion clinic could lose its license and be shut down. Health officials said the wording of the clinic’s disclosure form must match the language required by the informed consent law.
Sarah Stoesz, CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, said the clinic will submit a plan Monday on how the clinic intends to comply with the 2005 law.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health will review the judge’s decision and implement it, Guhin said.
“We’ve taken the view, at least with regard to the human being disclosure, that since the 8th Circuit ruled they’ve been obligated to comply, which is over a year ago,” he said, according to AP.
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dirty little secret pro-aborts don’t want the “mother” to think about; they are carrying a human being.
It's still an ugly, ugly thing:
Duh!!!
Why not? Minors can't legally enter into contracts. Neither can the severely retarded, people with dementia or people in a coma or the otherwise mentally incapacitated. U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier needs to explain why they are considered 'persons' in the legal sense and afforded Constitutional protections.
I appreciate her ruling insofar as it recognizes unborn humans as humans. But this judicial-tap dance around the legal definition of 'person' needs to be challenged.
I also question why she didn't support informing women seeking abortions of the risks to their health. As recognized 'persons' don't they have a right to be informed of the consequences to themselves. It's not like there are no studies to confirm the risks.
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Why the drop after 1960? (in deaths of women from illegal abortions)
The reasons were new and better antibiotics, better surgery and the establishment of intensive care units in hospitals. This was in the face of a rising population. Between 1967 and 1970 sixteen states legalized abortion. In most it was limited, only for rape, incest and severe fetal handicap (life of mother was legal in all states). There were two big exceptions — California in 1967, and New York in 1970 allowed abortion on demand. Now look at the chart carefully.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Abortion Statistics - Decision to Have an Abortion (U.S.)
· 25.5% of women deciding to have an abortion want to postpone childbearing
· 21.3% of women cannot afford a baby
· 14.1% of women have a relationship issue or their partner does not want a child
· 12.2% of women are too young (their parents or others object to the pregnancy)
· 10.8% of women feel a child will disrupt their education or career
· 7.9% of women want no (more) children
· 3.3% of women have an abortion due to a risk to fetal health
2.8% of women have an abortion due to a risk to maternal health
----------------------------------------------------------------------
So how many women’s lives have been saved by abortion?
Less than 3% of abortions since 1972 were reported to be “due to a risk to maternal health.” A reasonable person would recognize that not all of those cases represent a lethal risk. But let’s say they did. That means that nearly 45 million fetuses were butchered to save the lives of about 1.3 million women. Or put another way; 35 babies are killed to save each woman.
Abortion was legal in all 50 states prior to Roe v. Wade in cases of danger to the life of the woman.
Roe v Wade: FULL Text (The Decision that wiped out an entire Generation 33 years ago today)
The Abortionist in Chief cannot let this stand.
way cool.
where’s the chart on how many babies have died from abortions, legal and illegal?
bump!
They should also be ordered to show a video of the murder for money ( Doctor ) ? punching a hole in the babies head and the sounds of the brain being sucked out.
If an abortion ends a life, then it necessarily ends an ongoing relationship between TWO lives. Maybe the judge is swayed by a dualistic view of the human being.
pro-life bump
If you find statistics on the number of babies killed by illegal abortions let me know.
So now we have a “whole, separate, unique, living human being” who is not a person.
We are judged by imbeciles.
Good thing she upheld the essential part though.
By Dr. John Ankerberg and John Weldon
http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/apologetics/AP0805W3.htm The complete article is available in print friendly PDF format at: http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/_PDFArchives/apologetics/AP3W0805.pdf
The scientific authorities on when life begins are biologists. But these are often the last people consulted in seeking an answer to the question. What modern science has concluded is crystal clear: Human life begins at conception. This is a matter of scientific fact, not philosophy, speculation, opinion, conjecture, or theory. Today, the evidence that human life begins at conception is a fact so well documented that no intellectually honest and informed scientist or physician can deny it.
In 1973, the Supreme Court concluded in its Roe v. Wade decision that it did not have to decide the “difficult question” of when life begins. Why? In essence, they said, “It is impossible to say when human life begins.” The Court misled the public then, and others continue to mislead the public today.
Anyone familiar with recent Supreme Court history knows that two years before Roe V. Wade, in October 1971, a group of 220 distinguished physicians, scientists, and professors submitted an amicus curiae brief (advice to a court on some legal matter) to the Supreme Court. They showed the Court how modern science had already established that human life is a continuum and that the unborn child from the moment of conception on is a person and must be considered a person, like its mother. The brief set as its task “to show how clearly and conclusively modern science—embryology, fetology, genetics, perinatology, all of biology—establishes the humanity of the unborn child.” For example,
In its seventh week, [the pre-born child] bears the familiar external features and all the internal organs of the adult.... The brain in configuration is already like the adult brain and sends out impulses that coordinate the function of other organs…. The heart beats sturdily. The stomach produces digestive juices. The liver manufactures blood cells and the kidneys begin to function by extracting uric acid from the child’s blood.... The muscles of the arms and body can already be set in motion. After the eighth week… everything is already present that will be found in the full term baby.
This brief proved beyond any doubt scientifically that human life begins at conception and that “the unborn is a person within the meaning of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Thus, even though the Supreme Court had been properly informed as to the scientific evidence, they still chose to argue that the evidence was insufficient to show the pre-born child was fully human. In essence, their decision merely reflected social engineering and opinion, not scientific fact. Even during the growing abortion debate in 1970, the editors of the scientific journal California Medicine noted the “curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death.”
In 1981, the United States Congress conducted hearings to answer the question, “When does human life begin?” A group of internationally known scientists appeared before a Senate judiciary subcommittee.
The U.S. Congress was told by Harvard University Medical School’s Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, “In biology and in medicine, it is an accepted fact that the life of any individual organism reproducing by sexual reproduction begins at conception....”
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, Jr., of the University of Colorado Medical School, testified that “the beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political or economic goals.”
Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School noted: “The standard medical texts have long taught that human life begins at conception.”
He added: “I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty... is not a human being. This is human life at every stage albeit incomplete until late adolescence.”
Dr. McCarthy De Mere, who is a practicing physician as well as a law professor at the University of Tennessee, testified: “The exact moment of the beginning [of] personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception.”
World-famous geneticist Dr. Jerome Lejeune, professor of fundamental genetics at the University of Descarte, Paris, France, declared, “each individual has a very unique beginning, the moment of its conception.”
Dr. Lejeune also emphasized: “The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.”
The chairman of the Department of Medical Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, Professor Hymie Gordon, testified, “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”
He further emphasized: “now we can say, unequivocally, that the question of when life begins… is an established scientific fact…. It is an established fact that all life, including human life, begins at the moment of conception.”
This Senate report concluded:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.
In 1981, only a single scientist disagreed with the majority’s conclusion, and he did so on philosophical rather than scientific grounds. In fact, abortion advocates, although invited to do so, failed to produce even one expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any other point than conception.
Again, let us stress that this is not a matter of religion, it is solely a matter of science. Scientists of every religious view and no religious view—agnostic, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, Christian, Hindu, etc.—all agree that life begins at conception. This explains why, for example, the International Code of Medical Ethics asserts: “A doctor must always bear in mind the importance of preserving human life from the time of conception until death.”
This is also why the Declaration of Geneva holds physicians to the following: “I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception; even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity.” These statements can be found in the World Medical Association Bulletin for April 1949 (vol.1, p. 22) and January 1950 (vol. 2, p. 5). In 1970, the World Medical Association again reaffirmed the Declaration of Geneva.
What difference does it make that human life begins at conception? The difference is this: If human life begins at conception, then abortion is the killing of a human life.
To deny this fact is scientifically impossible.
Oh, what's that?... You don't count the female babies slaughtered in the womb?
Why not, since their sex is discernable within days of their conception?...
What's that? It's not convenient! Right, try that one with God when you stand before him without Planned Barrenhood or the ACLU or any democrat Congressghouls to plead your case. Lies only work this side of eternity. Truth will be the only currency 'over there'.
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