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The Woman's Right to Know Act

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In 1992, the state of Wisconsin passed the Woman’s Right to Know Act, requiring that physicians provide pregnant women with information concerning abortion, the risks of abortion, fetal development, alternatives to abortion, and other information so that women deciding whether to have an abortion can make an informed decision. The act also requires that women receive a sonogram to see the developing fetus while the doctor provides the aforementioned information, and must then wait a full 24 hours before the abortion can be performed. This act sought to give a consultation that provides women with accurate and adequate information regarding their abortion, including connections to adoption agencies, pregnancy care centers, and medical assistance benefits, but despite the intentions of the act to provide help for women, it has done more harm than good in practice. I seek to debate that the Woman’s Right to Know Act should be repealed because it intrudes on the confidential relationship between patients and doctors, harms women more than it helps them, and is overall unconstitutional. Many opponents of this act have argued that government interference in the abortion process is wrong because it directly violates the principle of doctor-patient confidentiality that has been upheld for decades. The bill is a dangerous intrusion into the confidential and deeply personal relationship that exists between women and their doctors. Physicians must be free to treat their patients based on their own medical knowledge and expertise and should not have their advice overridden by elected officials seeking to impose their own ideological agenda on others. This intrusion into the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship is similar to that which the Supreme Court recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, where the Court ruled that a woman's choice to have an abortion was protected as a private decision between her and her doctor (The Right to Privacy). We recognize the right of individuals to be free from governmental intrusion into medical matters, and that right includes a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. While the state’s interests in this act may involve the health and safety of the pregnant woman as well as protection of the potential future life that she carries, these objectives do not permit the state to interfere with the confidential relationship between the patient and her doctor. Intrusion into the physi

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