S.D. docs can discuss mother-fetus relationship

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - It is legal for South Dakota to require doctors to tell a woman seeking an abortion that she has a legal relationship with her unborn child, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier was incorrect when she ruled it was unconstitutional for doctors to be required to tell patients there is a relationship between mother and fetus.

But the court said Schreier was correct in striking down parts of the state's abortion law that require doctors to tell patients that undergoing the procedure increases the likelihood of suicide.

Planned Parenthood, which runs the state's only abortion clinic in Sioux Falls, sued the state after its 2005 law was passed and Schreier had temporarily prevented it from taking effect. The 8th Circuit overruled that order in 2008 and the state began enforcing the law.

In August 2009, Schreier ruled that doctors must make the biological disclosure "that the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," which the 8th Circuit said was required. But she also at the time ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood in saying pregnant women do not need to be told that they have an existing relationship with the fetus abortion or that abortion increases the likelihood of suicide.