Planned Parenthood bill called a 'medical travesty' now heads for Daugaard's desk

PIERRE — Reproductive health advocates said South Dakota could become the first state to effectively write the script for doctors who provide abortions under a bill on its way to the governor's desk.

Senate Bill 110 asserts that physicians at Sioux Falls' Planned Parenthood clinic, the state's lone abortion provider, violated informed consent laws when they prefaced legally-required statements with the phrase, "Politicians in the State of South Dakota require us to tell you."

National reproductive health groups said the bill is the first of its kind in its effort to write into state statute what physicians must tell patients, but also what they ought not to say.

"I haven’t seen a proposal this prescriptive before," said Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues manager at the reproductive rights think tank Guttmacher Institute. "It would really do a lot of damage."

The House of Representatives advanced the bill Monday on a 56-9 vote. It moves to Gov. Dennis Daugaard's desk where Chief of Staff Tony Venhuizen said the Republican governor is inclined to support the bill.

Physicians and reproductive health advocates said the move to scold physicians for injecting medical opinions into state-mandated statements violates doctors' free speech rights and could pose a danger to patients who may not otherwise receive scientifically accurate information.

More: Lawmakers take issue with what women are told before abortions

The bill's supporters said the measure meant to flag concerns with the way Planned Parenthood relayed state-mandated informed consent provisions to patients.

“The idea that you would preface a disclosure with, ‘politicians tell us to tell you these things,’ is antithetical to the purpose and the effectiveness of disclosures,” bill author Rep. Steven Haugaard, R-Sioux Falls, told a committee this month. “These aren’t simply words dictated by the state. This is an effort to convey truth to an individual who is in a very serious situation."

Under current law, doctors must tell patients that women who undergo abortion procedures could experience depression and suicidal thoughts. They must also relay the procedure would "terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," and could end a relationship protected under the U.S. Constitution and state law.

Studies, including one in the Journal of the American Medical Association, have found that women who weren't able to obtain an abortion experience anxiety at greater rates than those who were able to have an abortion. And women in both groups experience depression at the same rate over time.

While the bill doesn't set an additional penalty for physicians that add information to the informed disclosure requirements, physicians said it aims to condemn those who'd point out factual holes in the requirements.

“To replace the expertise of dedicated physicians with legislatively mandated misinformation disseminated by uncertified medical amateurs is a medical travesty, an un-American assault on the First Amendment and puts politicians squarely between me and my patients,” Dr. Marvin Buehner, a Rapid City OBGYN, told a legislative committee this month. "This bill epitomizes government intervention into the doctor-patient relationship."

No other state has tried to write into its laws allegations that an abortion provider failed to meet their expectations in relaying informed consent laws, said Ashley Gray, state advocacy advisor at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The bill would also give more authority to third-party pregnancy help centers, a move that would have little if any immediate impact due to an ongoing legal battle.

In a statement Monday, Sarah Stoesz, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota said the bill unfairly implied the Sioux Falls clinic was in violation of state law. Reports from the Department of Health show the clinic has complied with state law.

"This bill goes beyond what we have ever seen before from politicians opposed to abortion in the state," she said. "It attempts to make an extreme law — one that does not exist anywhere else in the country and has already been declared likely unconstitutional — even more extreme.”

In 2011, the Legislature approved and Daugaard signed into law a proposal that would require women seeking an abortion to receive counseling from a "pregnancy help center" which advocates for abortion alternatives.

That law has been on hold for more than six years as the courts consider whether the requirement violates a woman's constitutional right to obtain an abortion. That measure is set to come up for court consideration later this year.

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