An interesting lecture at the University of Illinois Law School AFTER the November election: Baum Lecture features Yale Professor Robert Post "Informed Consent to Abortion: A First Amendment Analysis of Compelled Physician Speech"

An excerpt:

Baum Lecture features Yale Professor Robert Post "Informed Consent to Abortion: A First Amendment Analysis of Compelled Physician Speech"

The David C. Baum Memorial Lecture Series on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights will feature a lecture entitled, "Informed Consent to Abortion: A First Amendment Analysis of  Compelled Physician Speech" by Yale Law School Professor Robert C. Post on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 at 4 p.m. in the Max L. Rowe Auditorium. A reception will follow in the Pedersen Pavilion.

Professor Robert C. Post of the Yale Law School will discuss the First Amendment questions that arise in the context of a 2005 South Dakota statute regulating the "informed consent" of abortion patients. Professor Post will theorize the constitutional protections that should accrue to the "professional speech" of physicians, most particularly in the context of statutes obligating doctors to endorse the ideological speech of the state and to inform their patients of medical information contradicting scientific knowledge. . .

In 2006, the state of South Dakota passed a well-publicized statute that prohibits virtually all abortions. But few are aware that during the previous year South Dakota had enacted a statute designed "to revise the physician disclosure requirements to be made to a woman contemplating submitting to an abortion."   The Act, which was hailed as creating "a roadblock for the abortion industry,"  prohibits a physician (except in emergency conditions) from performing an abortion unless the physician first obtains "a voluntary and informed written consent of the pregnant woman upon whom the physician intends to perform the abortion."   The obvious objective of the Act, however, is to use the concept of "informed consent" to eliminate abortions. . .

The 2006 Baum Lecture will examine the limits of state control over the distribution of professional medical advice and will ask whether the 2005 South Dakota statute has run afoul of the First Amendment.