Opinion ID: 2103784
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Attending Physician Requirement

Text: Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-15-202(b) provides: In order to ensure that a consent for an abortion is truly informed consent, an abortion shall be performed or induced upon a pregnant woman only after she has been orally informed by her attending physician of the following facts and has signed a consent form acknowledging that she has been informed as follows.... The Court holds that this provision is unconstitutional because it is not narrowly tailored to achieve the State's legitimate and important interest in guaranteeing that a patient be informed of the risks of a medical procedure in accordance with recognized standards of acceptable professional practice. I disagree. [21] In City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc., 462 U.S. 416, 448, 103 S.Ct. 2481, 76 L.Ed.2d 687 (1983), overruled by, Casey, 505 U.S. at 884-85, 112 S.Ct. 2791, the United States Supreme Court similarly held that the critical factor in ensuring informed consent is whether [a woman] obtains the necessary information and counseling from a qualified person, not the identity of the person from whom she obtains it. In Casey , however, the Court rejected this portion of Akron and concluded that an attending physician requirement was an appropriate exercise of a State's broad latitude to decide that particular functions may be performed only by licensed professionals, even if an objective assessment might suggest that those same tasks could be performed by others. 505 U.S. at 884-85, 112 S.Ct. 2791. Accordingly, the Court held that Pennsylvania's attending physician requirement was constitutional. Section -202(b) is not appreciably different from the provision examined by the United States Supreme Court in Casey , and I would therefore hold that it is constitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and, by extension, Article 1, section 8 of the Tennessee Constitution.