*427 To the extent Akron I and Thornburgh find a constitutional violation when the government requires, as it does here, the giving of truthful, nonmisleading information about the nature of the procedure, the attendant health risks and those of childbirth, and the “probable gestational age” of the fetus, those cases go too far, are inconsistent with Roe's acknowledgment of an important interest in potential life, and are overruled.
Students in biology, human-anatomy, and medical-school courses look at pictures or drawings in textbooks of both healthy and damaged cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, and humans because those pictures convey factual information about medical conditions and biological systems. The argument that a *430 picture of a specific person or part of a person is opinion because not every person or part of a person with that condition would appear the same way is unpersuasive.... People with the same illness can and often will suffer a variety of differing symptoms. But one wouldn't say that a list of symptoms characterizing a particular medical condition is nonfactual and opinion-based as a result.
To belabor the obvious and conceded point, the required disclosures of a sonogram, the fetal heartbeat, and their medical descriptions are the epitome of truthful, non-misleading information. They are not different in kind, although more graphic and scientifically up-to-date, than the disclosures discussed in Casey—probable gestational age of the fetus and printed material showing a baby's general prenatal development stages. Likewise, the relevance of these disclosures to securing informed consent is sustained by Casey and Gonzales, because both cases allow the state to regulate medical practice by deciding that information about fetal development is “relevant” to a woman's decision-making.
Casey and Gonzales establish that, while the State cannot compel an individual simply to speak the State's ideological message, it can use its regulatory authority to require a physician to provide truthful, non-misleading information relevant to a patient's decision to have an abortion, even if that information might also encourage the patient to choose childbirth over abortion. Therefore, Planned Parenthood cannot succeed on the merits of its claim that [the statute] violates a physician's right not to speak unless it can show that the disclosure is either untruthful, misleading or not relevant to the patient's decision to have an abortion.
It cannot be questioned that psychological well-being is a facet of health. Nor can it be doubted that most women considering an abortion would deem the impact on the fetus relevant, if not dispositive, to the decision. In attempting to ensure that a woman apprehend the full consequences of her decision, the State furthers the legitimate purpose of reducing the risk that a woman may elect an abortion, only to discover later, with devastating psychological consequences, that her decision was not fully informed.
All that is left of petitioners' argument is an asserted First Amendment right of a physician not to provide information about the risks of abortion, and childbirth, in a manner mandated by the State. To be sure, the physician's First Amendment rights not to speak are implicated, but only as part of the practice of medicine, subject to reasonable licensing and regulation by the State. We see no constitutional infirmity in the requirement that the physician provide the information mandated by the State here.
In short, requiring that the woman be informed of the availability of information relating to fetal development and the assistance available should she decide to carry the pregnancy to full term is a reasonable measure to ensure an informed choice, one which might cause the woman to choose childbirth over abortion. This requirement cannot be considered a substantial obstacle to obtaining an abortion, and, it follows, there is no undue burden.
[I]f you just imagine for a moment being in that exam room with a patient who is—the doctor is talking, the doctor is talking on because she's mandated to be talking on by H.B. 2, and the patient is doing everything in her power to avoid that experience, and that interaction, and those sounds, that looks nothing like any informed consent that I am familiar with, any standard of informed consent. That's in complete violation of it.
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