united-states
In any US states are there laws, other than abortion laws, which require professionals to lie?
<p>Several US states have laws which require doctors to lie to patients who are trying to obtain an abortion.  <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/a-tennessee-law-requires-doctors-to-lie-to-their-patients-were-suing" rel="nofollow noreferrer">This 2020 ACLU article</a> summarizes several examples.</p>
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<p>In four states, doctors have to tell their patients that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer, even though that is factually wrong. Eight states insist that physicians include “negative emotional response” among the lists of risks associated with the procedure, even though mainstream medical associations have uniformly determined that this is false. Four states require doctors to lie to their patients about the risk having an abortion could have on their future fertility.</p>
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<p>These are clearly established as lies by actual medical research, e.g. obtaining an abortion objectively does not increase one's risk of breast cancer.</p>
<p>As Martin points out in the comments, if doctors are permitted to explain that the information is false they can avoid actually lying.  &quot;I am required by law to tell you that if you get an abortion you are more likely to die by suicide or breast cancer, but that is not actually true.&quot;</p>
<p>I am unfortunately unfamiliar with the best way to find the actual text of each state's laws, so I am unable to determine if any of the abortion laws in question forbid doctors from revealing that false information is false.  Consequently, I will broaden the scope to either being required to lie or being required to provide false information with the option of revealing it as such.</p>
<p>Are there other examples of laws in US states that require one person to lie to or mislead another?  If some narrowing of scope is needed, I am mostly wondering about examples which are similar in the sense of a professional being required to lie to someone obtaining some service or good from them.</p>

<p>A law requiring you to explicitly lie to someone would be a form of compelled speech, which is a violation of the 1st Amendment's free speech clause.  However, a &quot;lie&quot; in the legal sense would be a statement of fact that is objectively and demonstrably false.  There are lots of disclosure laws that require lots of people in different professions to do and say all kinds of things to and for their clients that might even be widely regarded as stupid, but that does not make them lies.</p>
<p>Taking the ACLU's claims at face value (I'm sure these laws exist but I'm not going to take the time to look them up), requiring doctors to disclose potential negative side effects of a drug or surgical procedure to a patient is clearly within the legislature's authority to do if they've determined that there is sufficient evidence to warrant it.  It's ultimately up to the courts to decide, but courts generally give wide latitude to legislatures and administrative agencies in this regard unless the statute is egregiously unreasonable.</p>
<p>Either way, the doctor does not have to assert the disclosures as statements of fact, and they are free to tell their patients that they do not believe them to be true, so there is no compelled speech involved.</p>
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<p>I'm not trying to express support or opposition to abortion here, so please don't start a dumpster fire in the comments.  But the ACLU article you linked is a straight-up opinion piece.  The ACLU believes that the statements are lies.  There are a lot of weasel words just in the paragraph you quoted.  Out of curiosity, I did a search on their claims.</p>
<p>The top search result for &quot;abortion and breast cancer&quot; is <a href="https://www.cancer.org/healthy/cancer-causes/medical-treatments/abortion-and-breast-cancer-risk.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this article from the American Cancer Society</a>, which contains this statement:</p>
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<p>The results of studies looking at the possible link between breast cancer and induced abortion often differ depending on how the study was done. Cohort studies and studies that used records to determine the history of abortions have not found an increased risk. Some case-control studies, however, have found an increase in risk.</p>
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<p>In other words, we don't really know for sure.  So it's not as &quot;factually wrong&quot; as the ACLU says.</p>
<p>A search for &quot;abortion effects on future fertility&quot; yields <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2225607/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this study from the U.S. National Institute of Health</a></p>
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<p>... Women whose pregnancy is terminated by dilatation and evacuation may have an increased risk of subsequent premature delivery and a low birthweight baby. Very little has been published and no conclusions can be made regarding the effects of instillation procedures and repeat abortions on future reproduction.</p>
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<p>So there's definitely a risk from a <em>particular kind</em> of abortion (a D&amp;E, which are performed usually for mid-late term pregnancies), but no significant risk from an instillation abortion (a vacuum catheter in early pregancy).  This study is from 1990, so medication-induced abortions were not available then.  It was just the first search result that wasn't a news article.</p>
<p>And then there's the &quot;negative emotional response&quot; risk.  I'm not even going to tackle that one it's so weaselly.  What does that even mean exactly?  &quot;...Mainstream medical associations have uniformly determined that this is false.&quot;  Which medical associations?  And what constitutes &quot;mainstream?&quot;  I highly doubt there is uniformity of opinion.</p>
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<p>Bottom line is, no, a law cannot require you to lie.  And the laws in this example are not lies per se.</p>
