Posted on 06/30/2005 8:13:41 PM PDT by SmithL
PIERRE, S.D. - A federal judge on Thursday blocked a South Dakota abortion law from taking effect, tentatively ruling that the statute is an unconstitutional violation of doctors' free speech.
The law would have required abortion doctors, starting Friday, to tell women that abortion ends the lives of "human beings" and poses medical and psychological risks.
U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier of Rapid City ruled that Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, which sued the state, has shown it has a good chance of prevailing in court.
"The South Dakota statute requires abortion doctors to enunciate the state's viewpoint on an unsettled medical, philosophical, theological and scientific issue, that is, whether a fetus is a human being," Schreier wrote in granting a preliminary injunction.
The judge also said the proposed law discourages doctors from expressing views that contradict the state's message. A hearing is set for October on Planned Parenthood's request for a permanent order barring the state from implementing the law.
State lawyers had argued Wednesday that the required information is medically accurate and supported by science.
Planned Parenthood lawyers said the measure, passed by the 2005 Legislature, is ideological and vague.
Abortion has been legal since a 1973 Supreme Court ruling. However, the high court has said states may place reasonable restrictions on abortion.
The judge said the state may express its preference for childbirth over abortion by requiring that a woman be told about fetal development and the assistance that may be available if she decides to give birth.
Under the proposed law, doctors who failed to comply could have been jailed 30 days and fined $200.
Heaven forbid that we actually tell them what really happens.
But we mandate "free" speech with warnings on cigarettes and that is OK.
WHO APPOINTED HER? CLINTON??????? DOES ANYONE KNOW?
So a fetus isn't a human being eh? I'm sure science would be shocked by this finding.
What the idiots fail to acknowledge is that when an abortion is botched many times there is a great deal of effort put forth to ease the suffering of the baby. This is using the lunatic lefts own words.
An aborted baby at 8 weeks of age.
This isn't a baby?
That's a stupid law -- putting doctors in jail for telling the truth. And they call this freedom of speech?
And this isn't a baby?
This is just another reason why you should sign this petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/lp001/petition.html
Nominated: U.S. District Judge District of South Dakota |
Former Position: U.S. Attorney District of South Dakota |
Date Nominated: March 8, 1999 |
Current Address: United States District Court Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, Room 318 515 Ninth Street Rapid City, SD 57701 605-343-3744 |
Date Confirmed: June 30, 1999 |
Within the last two weeks, I have seen the face of my next grandchild, a girl, on a 4D ultrasound, due on August 26th.
She smiled.
And I wept.
Your link doesn't take you anywhere.
Damn you Karen.
No surprise, Karen Schreier is/was a Daschle acolyte, recommended to the bench by Daschle and appointed by the 'toon.
I wanted to make people think about what they're doing that's why I wrote my song "How Many Babies Are Crying In Heaven Tonight" because I figured if people hear it, then maybe it may make them think.
And after I saw a picture online of a protester carrying a sign that said "Pro Choice! It's My Body And I'll Do What I Want With It!" I got the idea that a little play on those words might paint a different picture. So I opened my first storefront at www.cafepress.com a couple of weeks ago and made this T-shirt.
Maybe no one will buy it except me but it will be seen every time I wear it. And it will make people think.
Maybe more people could do the same thing. Come up with thought provoking statements to make people think.
The anonymity enjoyed by most of these district and appellate level judges is gone thanks to the internet. Heretofore, the court could rely on the liberal media to respect their anonymity because that media approved of their rulings and wanted to have them respected and enforced. More, the media wanted more of these kinds of decisions to further shape the world to fit their liking. The media want the public to accept the courts as detached from sordid politics, motivated only by Olympian devotion to the "law." Now, every decision will be footnoted by the internet and the footnote will expose the politics of the court of even these inferior courts.
In a very short time, reckoned in years, not decades, the public will come to correlate the courts' decisions with the politics of its judges. As this happens, the public will rationally come to regard the judiciary as merely another venue of politics. Cynicism will spread with every decision. This tendency is not altogether new, it has long obtained among members of the bar and among whole chunks of lay society old enough to have watched the Bork or the Thomas confirmation hearings. But, in general, the laity has accepted the Third Branch as legitimate and somehow not political, but "legal."
As the public perception of the courts alters from "legal" to "political" the deference to the Courts' decisions will inevitably decline. The idea that a court is a place where we can take disputes to obtain a fair hearing will be rightly questioned as the courts become seen as a place for the advancement of cultural, social, or political agendas. The prestige of the courts will decline as the public figures out that they have become places for the advancement of group rights as a band of litigants cleverly job the system by defining themselves as a favored group. People will even question why the judges should enjoy the accoutrements of authority: Why should they wear robes, are not business suits good enough for brokering deals? Why do they sit on elevated benches, are they any better than us? Should they wield a gavel? Are they medieval Bishops in robes, perched on thrones, carrying gavels instead of Sceptres?
The last evidence of this growing tendency is the gross miscalculation committed by the majority in the Connecticut eminent domain case. The liberal majority, in its reflexive desire to engross government, especially at the expense of property, has made a tactical and probably a strategic blunder which will only hasten the process which I am trying to describe. Posters want a Boston Tea Party but with dirt! They are saying the ruling is wrong, not because it is unwise only, but because it is illegitimate. What does one do with an illegitimate government? One does it through the internet.
This process of disillusionment is probably inevitable because it cannot be arrested by the exercise of judicial restraint by high-minded judges. "High-minded" judges are those who love the law, and cherish the rule of law. By definition, they are apostles of judicial restraint. The are not activists, that is, they do not see their authority as a mandate to remake society to their liking. But my definition of high-mindedness is anathema to a frighteningly large block of our body politic. To them, such judges are obstructionist, reactionary, partisan, homophobic, misogynist and racist. These people are called "liberals" and there are many infesting our benches.
So to describe the dichotomy as the tension between judicial restraint and activism is to mislead with euphemism. The real dichotomy is conservative vs. liberal. Statistically, this twain can never meet. Liberals are liberals because they are driven to play God. While many liberals convert to conservatism, it is rare enough among those who have attained an age to become a judge. Besides, liberal judges could hardly be better positioned to play God. Absent a twelve step program, a liberal judge will go to his grave such.
The comity among judges will be strained and finally erupt in public recrimination. This will reflect the growing tendency in the public generally. I think it is already wearing thin among the Justices, witness Scalia's scathing dissents and his public debates with his colleagues. One can only admire the saintly restraint of a Justice Thomas who, as a human being, must still years later daily taste the cup of bitterness poured for him by Senate Liberals. Truly, although not the first Afro-American to ascend that bench, he is the Jackie Robinson of the Supreme Court. Sooner or later, the tongue will betray the real passions which have so far been muffled among all the various levels of the judiciary. Thomas has already written that he is prepared, in effect, to junk stare decisis in order to undo the mischief done in previous liberal decisions or at least undo their validity as precedents.
So, I believe the courts are in a race to the bottom with activist liberals pushing the tolerance of their colleagues and the public to a rupture. They virtually have no choice because they are in the last place where liberals can exercise power and because, ultimately, they would be God.
But now the crackup will be exposed on the internet.
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