<p>SD House Approves Abortion Ban
The South Dakota House has passed a bill that would nearly ban all abortions in the state, ushering the issue to the state Senate.</p>
<p>Supporters are pushing the measure in hopes of drawing a legal challenge that will cause the US Supreme Court to reverse its 1973 decision legalizing abortion.</p>
<p>The bill banning all abortions in South Dakota was passed 47-to-22 in the House.</p>
<p>Amendments aimed at carving out exemptions for rape, incest and the health of women were rejected.</p>
<p>The bill does contain a loophole that allows abortions if women are in danger of dying. Doctors who do those abortions could not be prosecuted.</p>
<p>While were it at let’s make it impossible for teens to have access to methods of birth control because we all know how effective abstinence programs are!</p>
<p>Hey, I am descended from a very long line of rapists and raped, as are half the people of Eastern Europe, and a large proportion of the raped died in childbirth.</p>
<p>So, once again, poor girls who get pregnant will be forced into back alleys for abortions, while the daughters of the rich will simply travel to a neighboring state for their RU-486 pills. Yet another example of compassionate conservatism.</p>
<p>I went to college before Roe v. Wade. I was lucky enough to have chosen a college within a short driving distance to NYC one of the few places abortion was legal in 1972. My cousin chose a college in the south and nearly bled to death under the care of a back-alley abortionist. Ironically her family was well off enough to have flown her to Europe for an abortion, but she did not confide in them.</p>
<p>That bill is just stupid. It will never get within shouting distance of the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>There probably is an opportunity for restrictions on abortion, but an effective legal strategy would need to be incremental, likely focused on parental notification issues.</p>
<p>It’s still a man’s world when it comes to reproductive matters. Senators will fight for the insured’s right to Viagra but not the pill. I wonder how many of those men voting for that measure would see their raped daughter carry a baby to term.</p>
You’re thinking of Plan B (“the morning after pill”), which is basically two doses of particular birth control pills taken within 72 hours of intercourse, long before it is known whether or not a pregnancy would have resulted. It may delay ovulation. But if ovulation has already occurred, it can also interfere with fertilization and with implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterus (that’s the same way an IUD works). This is the med that the FDA medical advisors, the professional board of obstetricians, etc all wanted to make over-the-counter, but it was denied in an unprecedented FDA ruling where they chose to ignore the advice of their own experts and bow to political pressure.</p>
<p>RU-486 (Mifeprex) is used after a pregnancy test is positive. It blocks the action of progesterone (“pro-gestation”) which is needed to support a pregnancy in the first few weeks. It is used up to 49 days after the start of the last menstrual period, and is followed up a day or two later with a second drug which causes the uterus to expel the embryo. The experience is like a heavy period or very early miscarriage.</p>
<p>I went to a girls’ country day school before Roe v. Wade. Girls who got pregnant were flown by their parents to Puerto Rico for abortions. …another example of the well off getting it taken care of, one way or the other.</p>
<p>In pre-Roe Texas, the well-off girls went to abortion clinics just across the border with Mexico. Abortion was (and probably is) illegal in Mexico, but the doctors and patients were all Americans so the Mexican officials apparently looked the other way. Girls in the northeast flew to Europe. I remember one very high-profile case where a mom (married adult) had taken thalidomide and was carrying a severely deformed fetus (flippers instead of arms and legs). She was unable to get an abortion in the US and flew to Sweden.</p>
<p>There are lots of anecdotes out there. I know a girl who got a legal abortion and almost bled to death and is now sterile. She did it away at college without informing her mother - who happens to be about as flaming liberal and pro-abortion as you can get. I don’t know what that means except there are risks even to legal abortion and that would seem to be a strong argument for parental notification laws.</p>
<p>Between the extremes of a total ban and abortion any time anywher lies a lot of territory and, I suspect, a large majority of US public opinion. Soembody asked if any of the men in the Senate would have their raped daughter bear a child. I cannot speak for them but I would. That is an extreme position and one not shared by most Americans. While it comports with my sense of morality I can readily see why it would not comport with somebody else sense of morality. As such I would never legally impose that view on someone else.</p>
<p>At the same time I am equally opposed to using abortion for selection of the sex of a child and I would not hesitate to legally impose than moral value on my fellow countrymen and I suspect the large majority of citizens agree with me and would support such a limitation on the alleged womans right to choice.</p>
<p>So what is my point in all this? A free people ought to be able to govern themselves and pass the laws they want. When they do society has a lot more consenus and a lot less divisive struggles over who sits on the Supreme Court. One extreme in this debate has turned this into an all or nothing struggle. By initially turning to the courts to get what they could not get in the legislatures or at least could not get as quickly they made control of the Supreme Court a winner take all venue. That was bad for the country and ultimately probably bad for their cause - a cause not entirely without merit.</p>
<p>CtC, I agree with you but only to a point. Sometimes the Court needs to lead and the people will follow. Left to the states, we’d still have segregation laws, poll taxes, and the like. Your core view, however, of having one view of morality that you’re not willing to impose on others, is something I agree with. Having a democracy means letting other people do things that we personally don’t agree with. Hell, if I were king, there would be no wiretaps without warrant but neither would there be any reality TV shows. My level of, ah, energy against the current administration is partly fueled by the kowtowing to, and otherwise influence of, the would-be ayahtollahs like James Dobson and Pat Roberton, with the aid of folks like Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn et alia, to inflict their narrow sectarian view on everyone.</p>
<p>Oh, btw, what about letting your daughter decide for herself?</p>
<p>Mind you I did not say I wouldn’t impose any of my views and values (narrow and sectarian or otherwise) on other people. I mean lets face it that is what government is all about - that and taking money from one group of people by force and giving it to another. When the court decided legalize abortion on demand it imposed an arguably narrow and sectarian morality on the unborn and the rest of us. My argument is all about process and what is the right way for a civil society to go about imposing narrow and sectarian views however and by whomever defines them as such.</p>
<p>As for letting my daughter decide for herself - well presumably if she is my minor daughter then legally and morally I am responsible for her actions and her well being and the well being of her unborn child. Ultimately the decision needs to be mine. </p>
<p>BTW I disagree that we would stil have segregation laws, poll taxes, and Jin Crow but for the courts. After all it was the same supreme court that decided PLESSY V. FERGUSON. Society moves and the courts and the legislatures reflect those moves over time. Generally it is much better to build consenus through the legislative process one state at a time than it is to try and impose it from on high. It is a good thing that the same country has different laws in Salt lake City, Utah and San Francisco, California. Mind you I don’t want to live in either of them but then I don’t have to and so it is a good country to live in for Salt Lakians, San Franciscans, and me.</p>
<p>*As for letting my daughter decide for herself - well presumably if she is my minor daughter then legally and morally I am responsible for her actions and her well being and the well being of her unborn child. Ultimately the decision needs to be mine. *</p>
<p>however many parents/guardians do not behave either morally or legally like responsible adults , otherwise many of these young women wouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place-
what if a girl has been raped by a family member-should we still allow that family member to decide if she should go through bearing his child?
Or would that be cruel and unusual punishment- for the victim, not the abuser.
the supreme court recently decided that doctors and patients in Oregon, should have the right to decide the course of medical care- re: right to die.</p>
<p>While I don’t think Roe V Wade is a great law the way it is written- we can’t go back to the law intervening with health care of individuals</p>
<p>Control over time and frequency of births ( or at all) is critical to a society that sees women as having a place besides brood mares.
Look at the cultures that don’t have abortion, that don’t have access to reliable birth control. How is the health of the women & the children affected by that?</p>
<p>Wow - I’m sorry - I didn’t realize that you were a single, widowed parent.</p>
<p>Oh, you’re not? Oh, there is another parent involved here? Why is it YOUR choice? I guess I missed the part of family law where fathers have complete dominion over the bodies of their minor children - a dominion which ends, morally, at the age of majority. Beware of so ephemeral a reign. </p>
<p>Would you say the same thing if your wife were raped?</p>
<p>I did not mean to imply that it would not be a joint parental decision. Trust me my better half is an extremely formidable individual whose opinions go unheeded at ones peril.</p>
<p>But I would like to address emeraldkitty’s point:</p>
<p>“Control over time and frequency of births ( or at all) is critical to a society that sees women as having a place besides brood mares.
Look at the cultures that don’t have abortion, that don’t have access to reliable birth control. How is the health of the women & the children affected by that?”</p>
<p>You are of course correct in what you say but there is a flip side concern for society as a whole as well. A population that cannot replace itself cannot grow economically, cannot defend itself politically, and cannot care for its elderly, sick, and infirm. Simply put when the birth rate drops below 2.1 children per woman lifetime a society begins to die. The consequences of declining birth rates are going to become manifest within a few decades in Japan and many European countries. Society has an obligation to itself to encourage, help, and support mothers and fathers.</p>
<p>I really do not think the planet is at risk of not having enough humans
what is more of a concern is enough potable water- enough arable land to grow crops and enough clean air to breathe.
We can’t educate, house, clothe or feed the people we have now.
Japan is having an alarming increase in the number of suicides.
Are they because of a declining birth rate- or is it from the stress from living in a culture where space is at such a premium, that an exchange student just could not grasp the concept of a “parking strip”, of a piece of land, that just was- that wasn’t being used to grow vegetables or for someones home.
Is that what we want our children to look forward to?</p>