Acorn

I don�t know if you�ve heard, but apparently abortion is illegal again. Let�s hear it for one giant step backwards for the state government of South Dakota.

I cannot in any sincere spirit call the state legislature of South Dakota a gaggle of self-serving patriarchal incestuous circle jerking hillbillies. That would be an undue slight to the decent regular flavor hillbillies of the country.

No, but I could muster the strength to label them a gang of buffalo-roping, wife-slapping, fly-over-state-living, self-designated protectors of a self-concocted, fallacious and flawed moral standard of �American-ness,� if I so desired. There, I have vented.

For the few who actually read this far, I would like you to consider the previous paragraph my own personal moment of screaming into the wind. Where my words are carried away off into the sea below to do no harm. It is my right to be pissed off at what the state government of South Dakota did, just as it is their right to do it. South Dakota has every right to pass legislation within its own borders.

On Feb. 22 of this year, the state senate of South Dakota passed legislation meant to ban most abortions in the state. Then on March 6, also of this year, the governor of South Dakota, Mike Rounds, signed the bill into law. House Bill 1215, �is an Act to establish certain legislative findings, to reinstate the prohibition against certain acts causing the termination of an unborn human life, to prescribe a penalty therefore, and to provide for the implementation of such provisions under certain circumstances.� As a side note, one may find it of interest to know that the main sponsor of this bill within the state legislature was democratic Senator Julie Bartling. That kind of shocked me.

HB 1215, �does allow doctors to perform abortions in order to save the life of the mother. It does not prohibit the taking of contraceptive drugs before a pregnancy is determined, such as in the case of rape or incest.�

The state of South Dakota knew that if this bill were to become law, which it did, then it would directly challenge the 1973 ruling by the Supreme Court on Roe v. Wade. One is forced to think that with two Bush appointees already on the court, and possibly a third in the next couple years, the overturning of this 33-year precedent is more than possible.

I admire South Dakota in a sense. I believe that, as a principle, precedents should be challenged with new perspectives to see if they hold up. After all, that is how civil progress is made in the judicial circuits. That is exactly what the American civil rights movement did for over 100 years culminating in the 1960s, and that is what gave us the Roe v. Wade decision in the first place. This modern pro-life movement is for real. The legitimate wing of the pro-life movement is just that, pro-life, and that is how they measure success.

How many abortions they can stop, how many unborn lives they can save, is how they define their progress.

I consider myself a Clintonian democrat for the most part. I think that abortions should be safe, legal and rare. If HB 1215 ends up overturning Roe v. Wade, my fear is that the atmosphere of stigma and shame will return to settle over womankind when they seek an abortion. This leads to the procurement of illegal abortions which are inherently unsafe, unsanitary and life threatening.

Do we want to return to the pre- Roe environment? Do we want to have �abortion cruise ships� parked off the coast of New Jersey like they do in Ireland?

If South Dakota really wants to have an atmosphere of life, then they should keep abortion legal and beef up their sexual education programs. It�s counter productive to make abortion illegal to save life.

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