Appeals court strikes down abortion regulation

BOSTON — The federal regulation banning government-funded family planning clinics from talking to clients about abortion is an unconstitutional attempt to limit freedom of speech, an appeals court ruled.

However, another federal appeals court has upheld the regulation, and the issue could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The need to protect the speech at issue here is even more important than public radio editorializing,” the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 4-1 decision released late Monday. “The speech involves informing a woman about the existence of a health- and privacy-related activity in which she has a constitutional right to engage.

“To ensure independence in a woman’s decision-making, the Supreme Court has rejected attempts to intrude into the dialogue between a woman and her physician,” the 1st Circuit majority said. “Read together, the new regulations force all Title X projects to provide incomplete and skewed information and to withhold requested, possibly even medically advisable information.

“The effect of the new regulations is to infringe upon women’s freedom of reproductive choice by denying them access to important information and by interfering with the physician-patient relationship,” the court said.

Massachusetts Attorney General James Shannon said the ruling was particularly significant because it comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last summer on Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services, which gave states further discretion to set limits on abortion.

“What the court has said here is that on constitutional grounds … these regulations are impermissible,” Shannon said.

Shannon and attorneys for various family planning groups challenged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services enforcement of the regulations in 1988.

In May, three judges of the 1st Circuit ruled in favor of the state, upholding a lower court injunction that blocked the ban on referrals.