It seems that "Telling Doctors What to Think" is somewhat misleading about exactly what the 8th circuit did.

From my reading of the ruling the 8th circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against the law, but that Planned Parenthood's case against the law will continue in the lower court. This means that while the law will go into effect, Planned Parenthood may still win their case and the law may ultimately be overturned. (This is not even counting the opportunities that Planned Parenthood has to appeal if they do end up loosing).

Basically, the lower court stopped the law from going into effect while they decided whether the law was acceptable. The appeals court said that the lower court could not stop the law from going into effect, but that the lower court could still decide the law was unacceptable. (Unconstitutional/illegal)

So while this law is terrible and there will be consequences for as long as the law is in effect, justice may still be served in the end.

Some of the statements in the article in question are downright misleading. Just as an example: "The 8th Circuit's decision to uphold the South Dakota law...". The 8th circuit did not uphold the law. They vacated the injunction and remanded the case to the lower court. If Planned Parenthood does lose in the lower court, they could appeal the case to the 8th circuit and the 8th circuit could rule in favor of Planned Parenthood without contradiction.

This is outlined in the first paragraph of the ruling:

"The Governor and Attorney General of South Dakota('The State'), along with the intervenor crisis pregnancy centers, appeal the district court's preliminary injunction preventing the 2005 version of South Dakota's statute regulating informed conses to abortion from becoming effective. For the reasons discussed below, we vacate the preliminary injunction and remand to the district court for further proceedings." (Bolding added) The ruling hinges on two things, (1) How likely any claim must be to succeed if a preliminary injunction is to be granted. (2) Whether planned parenthood's claim is likely enough to succeed that it meets the standard in (1).

I almost feel like this is a large enough factual error that Slate should publish a correction....