These Doctors Say a Law That Requires Them to Tell Women About the Consequences of Abortion Violates Their Freedom of Speech

Would you believe the American Medical Association (AMA), whose purported mission is to “promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health,” opposes fully informing women who seek abortions about the life growing inside them?

The AMA filed a lawsuit against North Dakota over its pro-life informed-consent law. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) represents a group of pregnancy centers that intervened in the lawsuit.

Before killing unborn babies in North Dakota, abortionists are required to fully inform the pregnant women that what’s presently growing inside them is a “separate, unique, living human being” and that poison-abortions can be reversed if the baby is treated quickly. An excerpt:

“It is an established scientific fact that the life of every human being—with his or her own unique DNA and all other building blocks of life—starts at the moment of conception,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot, vice president of the ADF Center for Life. “It is North Dakota’s prerogative if it wishes to ensure that women know about that as well as about the existence of promising medical procedures available to her if she chooses to reverse the chemical abortion process. A woman who is informed about the many dangerous risks of abortion, the reality of what the abortion will do to her child and to herself, and her options as a parent is far more likely to make a wise decision concerning her health and her child’s life.”

The ADF said the doctors’ group cited a U.S. Supreme Court case that barred the government from compelling speech. The association of supposedly rational doctors argued that informing women about the medical consequences of what was about to happen was compelled speech. Wrong, said the ADF (emphasis added):

As ADF attorneys who litigated the NIFLA case explain, North Dakota’s law deals with informed consent prior to a medical procedure with serious consequences, not unconstitutional compelled speech. The Supreme Court in NIFLA reaffirmed that such accurate, relevant information is lawfully part of informed consent to abortion.