Open Your Mouth and Say “Ideology”: Physicians and the First Amendment
Lauren R. Robbins, 12 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 155 (2009)
A South Dakota statute requires all doctors, under threat of criminal punishment, to tell patients seeking an abortion that an ‘abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.’ This forced communication of the term ‘human being’ is a statement on when life begins and it goes well beyond the informed consent regime that was upheld as constitutional in the Supreme Court’s landmark decision of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. This Comment examines whether a State can require that a doctor communicate to a pregnant patient that her developing fetus is a ‘human being,’ or whether such a law violates the basic tenets of the First Amendment.
