South Dakota Abortion Bill
 

I was hoping we could discuss the likely fallout of this...should it make it to Law. Both the plus and minus of the resulting impact on those who live in this state, and possibly this country:

"The Bill

There are various points to the bill, including that the Legislature finds:

* ... the State of South Dakota has a compelling and paramount interest in the preservation and protection of all human life and finds that the guarantee of due process of law under the South Dakota Bill of Rights applies equally to born and unborn human beings
* ... that the life of a human being begins when the ovum is fertilized by male sperm
* ... abortion procedures impose significant risks to the health and life of the pregnant mother
* ...a pregnant mother, together with the unborn human child, each possess a natural and inalienable right to life under the South Dakota Bill of Rights

The bill includes no exception for rape or incest victims, but does allow an exception for the life of the mother and for a pregnancy that poses a “serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” to the mother. Doctors who perform abortions that do not meet these exceptions will be charged with a felony.

This bill is being called the most restrictive anti-abortion measure in the nation."

http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abo...rtionban_2.htm

In my mind is the detriment to a rape victim, or the mother who finds her developing fetus has congental defects...and will likely die at birth. Both these women will be forced to carry to term regardless of the result. While I personally find Abortion to be a negative aspect of society....I find the above legislation even more bitter to swallow. Truly this is a very tough issue, and though we have discussed it many times in these boards.....the current bill could impact this country in many ways, and is worthy of attention.

While the mindset that is against legal elective abortions but for legal abortions in these particular cases is understandable, I don't agree with it.

There could certainly be benefits to carrying out the act when the pregancy is a result of rape or when the fetus has defects - psychological in particular. But I don't believe that these benefits come close to justifying the act.

South Dakota is my home state and i'm certian this is going to pass. South Dakota is very red (except we usually vote liberal senaters). I know the governer has said he will sign the bill. With that aside i'll put out my abortion stance.

I am against abortion except in certian cases. I believe the cases for exemption should be 1) health of the mother is in danger and 2) rape/incest case. As for people who get pregnate because they are irresponsible I think they should go through with the pregnacy and if they don't want their kid then we should have adoption centers ready to take the kid and pair them up with parents. However, one of my fears of something like this is we will get a lot of coat hanger abortions by scared girls. In addition in response to the point made about the kid having defects, let the kid live! I dated a girl for a few years whose sister was mentally disabled and she was the sweetest girl in the world. There is nothing wrong with these type of people, they mearly think differently. In addition there are many times when people are born with various genetic defects live long healthy lives. At least give them a chance.

With that been said, I find the timing of this bill curious. Now I haven't lived in SD for 2 years, but I have never heard talk of this bill in the past. All the sudden now this bill is passing the house right after Alito and Roberts are appointed. It seems like this may have been planned for a while and people were just sitting on the bill waiting for the supreme court to slant in a hope that a bill like this could overturn Roe v. Wade. I hope this isn't the case because I really hate politicing.

The fact that they actively fought against an exception for rape/incest...

shows what utter lack of humanity these "pro-life" folks have. and i'm being specific to those in SD who support this bill...but it's stuff like this that makes the entire term just a cruel joke.

if you want to talk about "major impairment of a function" then start talking about taking choices away from a sexual assault survivor...at a time when they need so critically to be in control over their body and life again. Apparently, mental health doesn’t enter into it…as long as they’re physically intact and fertile, its alright to help shatter someone’s mind by re-enforcing the loss of control of the rape by making her carry the pregnancy to term.

This is just flat out despicable.

This may very well be a test case for States when the inevitable Roe v wade overturn comes...it will be interesting to see the results. If indeed I was a resident of a state that passed such a bill, I would need to move for the benefit of my children, whether I am against abortion or not. After years of considering the ethics of this issue, I decided to take a civil liberties slant on my position, rather than an ethical one.
While I cannot claim to be at ease with my descision to be pro-choice (I dont think there is a "Right" answer to this debate), I find the other options to be far more disturbing in the long run. My position is quite simple actually:

* I cannot , or will not choose an abortion for myself (though the chances of this are zero as I am male)

* Should my wife decide otherwise, I respect her enough to discuss the option, and come to a joint understanding, in other words she must bear the child and thus her choice MUST be considered and given more weight than my own

* The choice of someone I do not know, let alone have any input into how they must live should not be mine

* Government must walk a very fine line in this issue, and should err on the side of human rights, rather than spooky dogma

* All information I have found to this point (scientifically sound) points to a lack of sentience in the fetus, which comforts me to an extent in my stance. This bears heavily on my definition of what is a person, and makes abortion more palatable in my view of society

* My descision not to abort has nothing to do with a soul, but rather with my selfish wants, and desire to have a child

The Key in this....is it is MY Personal Belief.....and I do not think so highly of myself, as to think I have the right to make this choice for everyone else

Mental health concerns cannot, on their own, justify a killing.

It may show a different path to humanity than what you would prefer, but it shows no lack of humanity.

Additionally: I give as much value to the "personal choice" argument as I would if it were used in an instance of elective infanticide.

If we believe, as the SD bill writers do, that causing permant damage to an exisiting human life can justify an abortion...i find it to be a dissembling and impermissable breach of logic to hold that mental health concerns are not of the same order as physical ones.

And given my experience as an advocate for survivors of sexual assualt...i'll go back to my assertion that it shows a utter disregard for humanity to fail to address that situation.

I'd disagree with this bill even if it did have such a caveat, but it's lack is the signal and proof of the idolotrous moral fetish of it's authors.

Honestly, I don't think there's going to be much "fallout" from this law. It's going to get challenged the moment the govenor's pen touches paper, and the people of South Dakota are going to have to foot the bill for a long legal fiight that, frankly, they're most likely to lose. The far right in the SD legislature is obviously offering this bill up as a test case for the new makeup of the Federal Supreme Court, and it's going to get there. Along the way, every level of the judicial system is going to say that this law is unconstiutional on the grounds that violates the Roe decision, which is clearly one the governing decisions in this situation. Now Alito and Roberts are certainly conservative (I don't think that anyone from either side of the aisle would disagree with that), and they, along with Scalia and Thomas, may find the Roe decision distasteful, but they are not activist judges. That means that SCOTUS is not going to throw out the Roe decision completely under any circumstances, although they might signal that they are willing to hear smaller challenges to it. Really, the SD legislature is being pretty stupid by expecting the Court to overturn Roe completely. If they really wanted to advance their cause, they'd do it in incremental measures. This is a waste of time and money.

By the way, I'm pro-choice but not militantly.

I guess that the republican led state legislature didn't want to entrust this kind of decision to the PEOPLE of that state by putting it on the ballot for 06.

I am pro choice because I do not think it my right to interfere in someone else's reproduction choices.

Also, as a male, I can not get pregnant.

The one thing that always make me wonder about the so called "Right to Life" folks is where they get off legislating how other people choose to live their lives.

That and the shear hypocracy of the term "Right to Life"

It's not a right to life that they are fighting for, it's a right to BIRTH.

After that unwanted child is born, 99% of them will consider it mission accomplished and turn their backs on these kids. Well, I have a shock for them, a human being requires more than just a right to birth to become a productive and happy person.

Who is going to look after all these unwanted children in the USA?

Their parents? - maybe in the very odd case, but most probably aren't capable of raising a child, or have no desire to raise a child.

Adoption? - there won't be enough prospective adoptive parents out there. Hell, there are kids right now in the USA who are put up for adoption that don't find homes.

Who's going to pay for these unwanted children to have a life? Are the Right to Birthers going to step up to the plate and say, "I am willing to have my taxes increased to cover the costs of my actions here today?"

I doubt it.

The Right to Birth crowd tends to be conservative republicans and they think they pay too much tax now and there are all kinds of kids alive right now living below the poverty line, but the right to birthers don't give a rat's ass about that. The USA is already drowning in 8.5 trillion dollars of debt because conservative republicans don't think they should pay tax.

This legislation is so poorly thought out, it'd be a joke, but it' s not, it's real.

The USA grows more conservative with each passing week it would seem.

It's not a matter of mental damage versus physical damage. It's a matter of damage versus mortal damage. You can disagree with the idea that non-life-threatening damage doesn't justify a killing, but to assert that it's an idea lacking in humanity is false. Period.

edit: The reason I believe in some leeway when it comes to physical health is because it seems like a gray area to me - where does the survivable end and the life-threatening begin? Also, if a mind is in danger of 'shattering' due to rape, I'm skeptical of the proposition that abortion will significantly improve that condition. For many (but certainly not all, mind you), I'd imagine it could even worsen the condition.

Does anyone actually find this type of argument the least bit insightful anymore? As if it's a strict dichotomy between "let the people do whatever they want" and "let the people only do what my God says they can". It's right up there with "they should've kept their legs closed".

Silly. It's both. Life primarily, birth incidentally.

99% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Even granting the ridiculous proposition that 99% of pro-lifers don't support government assistance,

Even granting the ridiculous implication that opposition to welfare is opposition to any assistance,

This doesn't show any hypocrisy. The right to life is simply that, a right to life. There are no adjectives such as 'comfortable' or 'ideal' there. Restate your argument in terms of the valuelessness of a right to life without a right to a life of opportunity and you might have something.

But that something can only result in "(some) pro-lifers aren't consistent! they're evil hypocrites!" and will do nothing to actually refute the pro-life position.

SO... South Dakota...

my initial reaction was that SD should have to deal with this law. if they want it, so be it. i know this is technically unrealistic at the moment (as RvW would have to be overturned first). but part of the problem with RvW is that it is not democratic policy-making, so abortion laws have less legitimacy with many people. so if SD thinks they will be better off with this law, i don't feel i should waste my time worrying about their decisions.

but aside from the negative aspects mentioned, it seems a law like this would also have negative economic (and criminal, via freakonomics) impacts on the state. people will probably think twice about moving there for a job. but the extent of these and other problems should be sorted out by SD. unfortunately the court battles probably won't allow for it.

Fool them all...

Did it ever occur to you that mental illnesses, including those with onset due to trauma, have a significant fatality rate?

I'd never say what was best for all survivors...there's no such pancea. But restoring their control over their body and giving them agency in how they recover seems as close to as a universal as they come. That means a *choice* about if they want to keep the child or not. Some women report that keeping the child was a way of bringing good out of evil. Others abort, and describe that as the moment that they were able to gain closure and separation from the threat that their assailant had inflicted. The universal there is that they felt in control of what came next.

It's precisely why i use the vocabulary of inhumanity. Simply, the only thing that could bring a person to advocate for a lack of exception in these cases is a <i>willing refusal</i> to see the woman as a person.

Glad they did it, can't wait until it makes its way up through the courts, at the very least I'm hoping this will put some power back in the hands of the state. I take issue with the stance that people something thing Abortion is an inalienable civil liberty; derived from a very suspect line of reasoning in Griswold V. Conn, the right to privacy. Roe to me is a joke of no legal muster, and what is a perfect example of judicial activism.

Are people here really big on the concept of euthanizing mentally or physically deficent fetus? What's the difference then between said deficent fetuses and regular mentally handicap people? They are nothing but a drain on our resources right? Inconvient, why wouldn't they be expendable? Also let us not forget that blacks are not people, that's why Dred Scott had no standing to sue for freedom. Oh and Hitler was right about the jews too, they aren't human, expendable therefore.

I have a question for you then...

What do you propose to do with millions of unwanted children?

Since Roe v. Wade, I believe the statistic is that 41 million abortions have been carried out in the USA.

Tell me, how do you propose to take care of those unwanted children?

When the day comes that the Right to Birth crowd takes up arms to assist the children already living below the poverty line, and they agree to face the implications of millions of unwanted children, then I am all for banning abortion.

Put you money where your mouth is says I.

And no-one is talking a life of comfort, I am just talking the basics of life be that food, shelter, education, health care, and some affection. All this whether you like it or not costs money.

What is your proposal to make these children into healthy, well adjusted, and productive people?

You see, I am a big believer in the so called critical years of a child's life. If these needs aren't met, the results are disasterous. All you have to do is look at the products of the Romanian orphanages from the 80's and 90's. You have children that were essentially born into homelessness who became wards of the state. They were put into iron cribs, they were fed sometimes, and changed maybe once a day.

By age 2 a child growing up in this environment is most likely emotionally and socially crippled. (Believe me, I have seen the results personally.)

So, tell me about that right to life arguement again.

This thread, unfortunately, has little to do with the SD bill already, but I'll do my best to turn us around.

The bill will be challenged as unconstitutional. It will go through the court system, being struck down at every level as inconsistent with Supreme Court precident. Finally it will reach the highest court in the land. And there...

The right to privacy was an improper reading of the Constitution from the start. That said, it has been a part of our national law and jurisprudence for so long that some may support it even though they believe it was a faulty concept to begin with.

The likely vote will be: Ginsberg, Stevens, Souter, Breyer, and ?Kennedy? upholding Roe and Thomas, Scalia, Alito, and possibly Roberts voting to overturn it. The Chief is definitely the hardest vote to predict on this one. However, there is very little possibility that the conservative faction could locate a fifth vote, so this speculation is not particularly meaningful.

One final point: if Roe is overturned, what happens to the right to abortion?

A common answer: abortion immediately becomes illegal throughout the United States.

This is, of course, completely false. If Roe is overturned, states will then have the opportunity to decide for themselves if they are interested in banning abortions or not. Thus, abortion would soon be banned in the bible belt, but would remain legal in the blue states.

Sure. What didn't occur to me is that abortion would ever provide life-saving mental benefits that any other treatment (psychological or otherwise) couldn't. Actually, a thought which also isn't occuring to me is that abortion could save a woman who was mentally on the edge of death.

Can you give me a case of mental distress/illness where the only options were losing the patient or killing the fetus?

Can you give me a case of mental distress/illness where abortion could even be a life-saving option?

Here, here's your worst-case scenario: the majority of the country is made up of evil, uncaring, uncharitable Randians. They give nothing and they vote in a government that gives nothing.

Even in that scenario, that would do nothing to fault the pro-life position. "You should be caring for those unwanted children!" does NOT lead to "We should be able to kill them if you don't!" Guilt-tripping ransom does not amount to a logical argument.

Unless, of course, they're just a clump of cells. But that would take the focus off your brand of argument. It's a valueless argument either way.

Abortion isn't an acceptable solution for unwanted children any more than infanticide is. There's that right to life argument again.

I don't favor abortion as a means of birth control. You take a life. You don't want to call it human, because if you do that makes it very uncomfortable, so you call it a fetus.

On the rape issue, I don't think capital punishment for the baby in response to the father's crime is appropriate, but I do think that the law should cover severence of rights for a child conceived through sexual assault. What woman wants her rapist to have rights to her child?

In my opinion, any anti-abortion law would have to cover the health of the mother, the viability of the pregnancy, and sever the rights of any rapist (but not the obligation to pay support).

Fool them all...you're either asking a question i don't understand or being deliberatly obtuse. Women do commit suicide in the aftermath of rape, this is well known. And i don't think it's at all out of the question to suggest that compelling a woman by the power of the state to keep a pregnancy that starts in rape....might make the difference between life and death in some cases. I'd already outlined that. So what are you asking? For empirical data? There's no such study, for the same reasons that we haven't the data on how many kids survive when you leave them with wolves. Conducting such a study would necessarily entail the damage of participants. Darkly, i suppose we will find out what happens if this law passes.

i've seen a whole lot of the writing on the opposition to a rape exception...and the only way they get the rhetoric there is by completely eliding the woman in the discussion. Such blindness comes at a price...

SirLance...consider also how few rapes are actually convicted. What woman, who by NO fault of her own is raped and lacks proof to convict her rapist. There might be no witnesses, and the woman probably knew her assailant. A whopping 7% of rapes reported to the police result in convictions (And only 40% of all rapes are in fact reported). So what about the legal limbo the vast majority find themselves in? Do we declare that a woman can terminate the rights of the father by accusing rape? Proving it to a lower standard?

What possible due process claim could actually provide the kind of benifit that you assume is required to make this law just? The answer is simply, that it's not possible.

But you say it like it's a matter of course.

You might be able to point me right here politico. I thought that Roe v. Wade, or perhaps subsiquent decisions derived from it had been upheld 5-4 by the last court. Rehnquist had been one of the 4, with Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy ???... Then the 5 would've been Breyer, Souter, Ginsberg, Stevens, and O' Conner.

I guess that leaves me and you asking the same question, where does Kennedy and Roberts come down.

Politicophile nailed it. This is intended to be a test case that will rise to the SCOTUS. The absence of language addressing rape or incest assured that.

Agreed: this is a trial balloon for a run against Roe v Wade. I also concur with politicophile's assessment of the likely outcome of it.

Then to address the inevitable threadjack topic... I'm pro-choice, but I can respect where pro-lifers are coming from. I'd never want the choice taken away, but my personal choice in the matter, were it ever to come up, would never to be to abort an unborn child I had fathered.

But then, I'm in favor of people having the freedom to say things that offend me, too, so what the hell do I know. ;)

Bottom line, though, in terms of effective social policy is this: abolition never works. It just sends that which you've abolished underground, where it flourishes just fine, thank you very much, while billions are spent in law enforcement to chip away at the edges. We learned that during Abolition! Look at drugs and prostitution, as two fine examples. Thriving industries, both of them. I'm not saying I'm in favor of blanket legalization of those things--just that rendering them illegal is tanamount to putting blinders on.

I have a confession to make. This thread was meant to evaluate our membership in politics, to decide what direction was needed to "fix" the partisan split in here...and get people to focus on debate, rather than argument. If we could manage this level of discussion in all aspects of this piece of TFP.....we would all be better off.

I just wanted to congratulate you all....for making this thread well worth the effort, and proving a point to me....and yourselves.


Now....back to the regularly scheduled programming.

actually, i have to disagree with you. you're techinically right, but many states still have anti-abortion laws on the books. so as soon as roe v. wade is overturned, those go back into effect. i think i read that when roe was originally decided, abortion was illegal in like 45 or 48 states. some may have made it legal, some may have removed the old ones, but i bet most would revert back to the old laws and make it illegal immediately.

Abortion is one of those interesting issues that shows that some people only like democracy when it supports what they believe in, and toss it out when the people do not support their views.

I think those who wish to allow for the termination of pregnancy on a mothers whim have no desire to see this come to a vote, either nation wide or state to state. Honestly I am not either. While most states would outlaw abortion, I'm sure a few would allow it. Much like people in socialized medical systems that take health 'vacations' where they travel to a country with private medical services to escape the inadequacies of their home system, you would see abortion 'vacations' set up to those states that allow it. The net effect would be abortion would only be open to the upper and middle classes in many places.

This would cause me to continue to need to spend more money on the welfare underclass, as well as adding to the numbers of uneducated urban voters who will be pandered to by left with money from the producing classes. Much like having an abortion my support is totally selfish.

This theory is known as the ‘Roe Effect’. It is believed it has cost the democrats a net 5 million votes if you look at voting trends and who had the abortions. I don’t know if this is in fact true but it is an interesting theory.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the lefts unfaltering support of abortion has cost them the very power to maintain it? Likewise the rights desire to end this practice may well seal its fate as a minority philosophy in the years to come.

You can’t kill some odd 35+ million potential people off and not expect there to be unforseen consequences.

Ustwo, the majority of the people in this country support at least some form of legalized abortion. The SD bill clearly goes beyond what the people want.

I echo the notion of this bill as supreme court fodder. I don't know if Roe will be overturned. I am pretty sure that if it is, people will still get abortions. They will just be either more expensive or more dangerous.

This is a good point and one that I had overlooked. You are absolutely right that any currently unconstitutional state abortion bans would be reactivated if Roe were overturned. I do suspect, however, that such bans would be taken off the books if it looked like Roe was headed back to the Supreme Court. It just seems impossible that abortion would be banned in places like California, Washington, New York, etc.

The very worst thing that can happen in constitutional law is for the Court to completely reverse its position: doing so is a blow to the rule of law. The question then becomes: what do you do if the precident is really, really bad? Does anyone really think that Brown v. Board was a bad decision?

Here is the position I find myself in: Griswold invented a right to privacy that absolutely does not exist in the Constitution. If the states wanted to amend the Constitution and add such a right, they could do so. There has been no such amendment, however, so the right continues to not exist. Thus, Roe v. Wade is based on totally faulty precident. The federal judiciary should never have taken it upon itself to regulate a practice that falls squarely in the domain of state legislatures.

BUT: Roe has been on the books for all of my lifetime, plus an additional thirteen years. The instability created by overruling it would be terrible. A cornerstone of our society is stability of law: Locke discusses it, as does Montesquieu.

This bill, should it reach the Supreme Court, will have a massive impact on Constitutional Law in our nation. And yet I remain torn as to what outcome I would prefer.

Allow abortions for rape, incest, and direct health risk to the mother, and the nation would be behind banning it for its most common use, which is birth control of the uneducated and irresponsible.

Well, you answered the second question. Not with evidence, but plausibly nonetheless.

I'm not seeing, however, how any such case couldn't be dealt with through therapy. And if therapy doesn't work, why would you expect an abortion to work? You're talking about a measure which ends the life of a human being. You need a damn good justification. It needs to be necessary.

Yeah, you still don't have any basis for asserting this.

Irresponsibility is in the eye of the beholder. You freely speculate about the societal repercussions of legalized abortion. One repurcussion that is probably more likely than your democratic party negative feedback example is in the area of criminal justice. It has been argued that legalized abortion has reduced crime overall. This makes sense, abortion is often employed by those without sufficient resources, responsibility or desire to raise a child; poor, unwanted children with irresponsible parents are more prone to criminal activity. I think that it is responsible to abort a child if you know that you can't do right by that child because it is perhaps highly likely that that child might end up being a complete drain on everything it touches. It sucks that people put themselves in a position where they have to make a choice like that. If it comes down to someone aborting a fetus because they aren't able to raise the child it may become or raising the child when they clearly lack the ability to do so, i would rather they save us all the trouble.

As for lack of education, the majority of the most ardent antiabortionists don't seem to support the education of the uneducated on the matter of birth control. Abstinence only. I would wager that sex education would have at least as large an impact on the number of abortions as criminalization.

Well, then you will see a whole lot of women who have been raped, subjected to incest, or are going to die.

passed and signed..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060306/...4yBHNlYwNmYw--

Any betting pools on how long this takes to go to Scotus?

Take awhile to make it's way through the lower courts, depending on how they rule. 6 months?

Mmm does this one go to the 9th Circus?

8th circuit.

* Arkansas
* Iowa
* Minnesota
* Missouri
* Nebraska
* North Dakota
* South Dakota

<b>I know....I know...all of the states that pass laws that outlaw abortion, even in the case of rape or incest, could pass the bill below, that is now being considered in Missouri. Then....a woman who is a member of the official state religion who is raped or "incested" into an unwanted pregnancy, and..."was a virgin who had been brutally, savagely raped and "sodomized as bad as you can make it"...and obviously never had sex before, so...it could easily be determined that she wasn't "asking for it".....maybe that RELIGIOUS virgin woman victim could go before a state board and appeal their FORCED PREGNANCY SENTENCE to the Mullahs....I mean the legislators...and be quietly driven in the middle of the night to the nearest state that does not interfere with non-religious women seeking a safe, legal abortion...maybe that would convince the SCOTUS to approve the South Dakota abortion? prohibition
I keep coming back to participate here because, if some of the ideas in some of the posts and ideologies of the posters are the "real deal" then I am not losing my mind, as I somtimes fear. The stuff that I read that is allegedly happening in some state legislatures in 2006 (and in the White House and in Congress), in the US of A, seems as surreal to me as viewing the collapse of the twin towers on TV on the morning of 9/11.

After 9/11, I moved downtown to live next to the WTC ruins for a few months, and the close proximity to the site helped to make it "real" for me. There is no chance that I'll move to a place under the rule of such medieval and draconian "thinkers" as the governor and a legislator like STATE SEN. BILL NAPOLI of South Dakota.

Thanks for reminding me via your posts supporting what they are attempting, that some of you and these politicians really think these things, passing laws like this that will really affect the lives of women in tragic ways.

the problem is which most people fail to forget is that pro choice doesn't necessarily mean pro abortion.

This is another attempt for the gov't to make a decision for us as they feel we fail to lack the self-conciouness to make a decision they have deemed right.

oh how the pendulum swings...i hope it start's moving left soon....

the fallout will be that a lot of people "on the fence" will think that the legislators went too far, and vote against them.

im sorry i dont have a lot to add that has not been said
that being said.... For the women of South Dakota: an abortion manual

Don't discount the ingenuity and the will of women to maintain control over their own bodies. This is the future in the United States, and unfortunately, only the most fortunate women who seek a relatively safe termination of a pregnancy will receive treatment as described below....i.e. in the future, this may be as good as it gets for women who seek abortion. Does a victim of forced sex deserve this, or a forced full-term pregnancy....does any woman deserve this, as a consequence of exercising her right to choose, only because she does not have the money to travel to another jusrisdiction? If you answer yes...why do you support the restriction of only those with limited wealth from choosing a safe abortion?:

What about birth control. The SD law makes hormone based birth control illegal with the statement "... that the life of a human being begins when the ovum is fertilized by male sperm"

No Pill, patch, ring, iud's, depo-provera. They do not necessarily prevent the fertilization of an egg, but its implantation in the uterus.

No morning after pill either.

Looks like condoms and foam from now on.

...wow..didnt' think of that statement..

foam is about 80% effective..roughly same as rhythm method when used perfectly....scary...roughly same as pullout as well...yikes..

i seriously don't see how in the world something like this passes in 2006...seriously...

As the father of two girls, I can honestly say it would be very difficult for me to live in South Dakota at this point. Not that I anticipate my daughters will ever get an abortion, but I simply could not remove this option from an unknown future for them. Fortunately I live in a state that is unlikely to change its laws in this regard anytime soon, but if indeed this did change, I would be forced to move elsewhere as a result.

Democracy is a bitch sometimes.

As tec has shown us, thats why we have 50 states. I find it highly improbably, almost impossible that all 50 states would outlaw abortion. If you live in south dakota and don't like the law there are 49 other states to chose from. Why anyone would live in south dakota in the first place is a mystery to me.

yeah, no kidding, that state sucks. sorry (if you live there).

i also think the "molly saves the day" renegade abortion guide, which i've seen linked various other places, was waaaay over the top.
so here's my guide:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3.../400/route.jpg

If we are to maintain our grasp on the fundamental rights of the United States of America, we must closely examine how ideology and percieved "moral values" are a stain upon our society. The purpose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is to maintain equal accessibility to freedom in this country. A law that hinders the rights of a specific group of the American citizenry (in this case women) is wholly antithetical to the core upon which our country is founded. Logic and rationality must be the mechanisms through which we govern ourselves, not alleged moral values which are based upon individual perception and are all-to- easily manipulated into baseless scare tactics.

Sorry to break it to you Spektr, but the Bill of Rights, or the constitution as a whole, in no place mentions any fundamental right to privacy, or for that matter anything on abortion. You find those at the behest of creative judicial interpretation.

Mojo_PeiPei, it may interest you to learn that the following is contained in the "Privacy Lesson" that the U.S. State Dept. displays on the web to inform folks from other countries about the matter of "a right to privacy". There are indications that the authors of the web page regard "a right to privacy", particularly related to a right to access to contraceptives and to abortion, without intrusion into these private matters, by the government, as "settled" law.....far from being a product of "creative judicial interpretation", they are the prevailing view of justices of competing politcal affiliation, for more than 115 years, and thus, are no more deserving of your "creative" label, than any other rulings of the SCOTUS, including "Brown v. Board of Ed."

Where else is their an example of such a long series of consistant and progressive SCOTUS rulings, as these rulings related to "privacy", that would qualify for the critical and marginalizing label of "creative judicial interpretation"? Can you provide any examples of a progression of SCOTUS rulings, on one area of the law, in an overlapping time period (late 19th century to early 21st century) that you would exclude from your "creative judicial interpretation"? Do you accept that the SCOTUS has any standing to interpret the constitution, that result in more legitimate interpretation, than it has in the privacy rulings?

I'm sorry you misinterpreted what I wrote Mojo. My comment was in no way related to the existence or lack there of of a privacy clause within the Bill of Rights or the Constitution. That is a seperate discussion in and of itself. The debate over abortion can be solved on a infinitely more simple level than that:

The goal of a representative democracy is, ultimately, the unconditional accessibility to equal rights for the entire citizenry. No special treatment, every citizen is granted the same inalienable freedoms. If our elected officials create legislation which, in effect, limits the rights of a SPECIFIC group of citizens and ONLY that group, then they have instituted a policy that is radically anti-American.

Unfortunately such a sound principle has been twisted by certain groups into the argument that not interfering with a woman's body is somehow unfair as it allows a woman to do something a man can not (abort a pregnancy), but yet to force a woman to carry a fetus to term is a perfectly balanced law because afterall it bans a man from having an abortion too, so is not gender discriminatory. As much as the absurdity of this logic is self-evident to myself and others, it doesn't dissuade its promoters.

Gender-specificity in legislation is not prohibited, as we recognize that there are unique aspects between men and women and that ignorance of the law does not necessarily promote the common good. I can walk around bare-chested all I want, but my wife would be cited for indecent exposure were she to do the same. I can see the point of those who would want to do away with this restriction, but the fact remains that no court finds this rule a violation of the Constitution or that too many Americans see it as a way to restrict the rights of women. It may be unequal but it is not unreasonable the law didn't give women breasts and men not, but the law does have to reflect the reality of the fact they have them and men don't. Likewise, the law didn't give women the ability to have a pregnancy and thus have the option to abort the pregnancy, thus there is nothing inappropriate about the law recognizing the reality that women have that option.

There are some valid reasons to oppose abortion, but the gender-equality arguement is not one of them.