Maria Newman | Trenton, NJ | September 12

NYT - A doctor is under no obligation to tell a pregnant woman that she is carrying “an existing human being” before performing an abortion, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled today in a decision that had been eagerly awaited by both foes and supporters of abortion rights in this country.

The 5-to-0 decision came in a case brought in 1996 by Rosa Acuna, who was 29 years old and married when she and her husband, who already had two children, agreed to an abortion about six to eight weeks into her pregnancy.

People on both sides of the abortion debate said that Mrs. Acuna’s medical malpractice case was essentially asking the court to weigh in on the long-debated issue of when life begins.

Mrs. Acuna charged that the doctor, Dr. Sheldon C. Turkish, did not provide her with “material medical information” before she and her husband signed a consent form allowing him to perform the procedure. Specifically, she said in her lawsuit, the doctor had a duty to tell her that the procedure would “terminate the life of a living member of the species Homo sapiens, that is a human being.”

The New Jersey justices apparently chose not to weigh in on that matter, as they reversed a lower court ruling that had sent the case to be reheard being initially dismissed.

“On the profound issue of when life begins, this court cannot drive public policy in one particular direction by the engine of the common law when the opposing sides, which represent so many of our citizens, are arrayed along a deep societal and philosophical divide,” Justice Barry T. Albin wrote for New Jersey’s highest court.

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[Decision and Syllabus] (PDF)