Ban on Most Abortions Advances in South Dakota

[whimsicaldeb]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/natio ... oref=login

Ban on Most Abortions Advances in South Dakota

By MONICA DAVEY
Published: February 23, 2006

PIERRE, S.D., Feb. 22 — Setting up South Dakota to become the first state in 14 years to start a direct legal attack on Roe v. Wade, lawmakers voted on Wednesday to outlaw nearly all abortions.

Across the country, abortion rights advocates reacted with outrage and dismay. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which runs the sole abortion clinic in South Dakota, said it was bracing to fight the move in court immediately, if the governor signs it.

"This represents a monumental step backward for personal privacy for women," Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said.

Some opponents of abortion rights celebrated what they called a bold and brave move and lauded South Dakota for taking the lead in what they said they hoped would become a series of states to challenge Roe, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal.

The shifting makeup of the United States Supreme Court, the opponents said, offered a crucial opportunity, the first since at least 1992.

"It is a calculated risk, to be sure, but I believe it is a fight worth fighting," State Senator Brock L. Greenfield, a Clark Republican who is also director of the South Dakota Right to Life, told his colleagues in a hushed, packed chamber here.

After more than an hour of fierce and emotional debate, the senators rejected pleas to add exceptions for incest or rape or for the health of the pregnant woman and instead voted, 23 to 12, to outlaw all abortions, except those to save the woman's life.

They also rejected an effort to allow South Dakotans to decide the question in a referendum and an effort to prevent state tax dollars from financing what is certain to be a long and expensive court battle.

To be enacted, the bill, the most sweeping ban approved in any state in more than a decade, requires the signature of Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, who opposes abortion.

After overwhelmingly approving the measure this month, the House, too, has to vote on it again because the Senate slightly reworded it, although the intent of the bill was unchanged and the vote there seems unlikely to shift.

Mr. Rounds has said he will not comment on whether he will sign the measure until it reaches his desk. It is likely to arrive there by next week. He has 15 days to make a decision.

In an interview this week, Mr. Rounds said he had doubts about whether now was the time to make a "full frontal attack" on Roe v. Wade, as opposed to pressing for more laws that restrict abortions — setting limits, for instance, on their timing, methods or the requirements for parental notification.

Those restrictions, he said, have immediate effects on preventing abortions in South Dakota.

Mr. Rounds suggested that the two approaches might be possible simultaneously, particularly as a way to keep opponents of abortion rights from splintering over strategy questions. The key, he said, was in "saving lives while at the same time appeasing a segment that says you won't know unless you try the direct frontal attack."

Lawmakers opposed to abortion rights here — and advocates opposed to abortion rights around the country — have been split over timing questions. Some argue that the arrivals of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the Supreme Court and speculation that Justice John Paul Stevens might soon retire, made now an ideal time to challenge Roe.

Others, however, have said a challenge should wait, for the arrival of additional justices who might be open to overturning Roe and for a shift in public opinion.

Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the South Dakota action — similarly broad bans have recently been proposed in at least five other states — reminded her of a wave of state challenges to Roe in the years just before 1992, when the Supreme Court reaffirmed a core right to abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

"People have this sense that the court is in flux and is shifting so they want to try to test out how far they can go," Ms. Northrup said. "The answer will be in how the new justices vote."

On Wednesday in the Senate chamber, any division about strategy among opponents of abortion rights seemed to have vanished.

"This state has a right and a duty to step up to the plate," Senator William M. Napoli, Republican of Rapid City, told his colleagues before he voted for the ban.

It passed by a margin larger than many on both sides had predicted.

Opponents, meanwhile, questioned the purpose of such a law and the potential costs of the litigation, and they recited harrowing stories of women who had become pregnant, for example, after having been raped.

"What can we as a state possibly gain by passing a bill that is unconstitutional?" asked Senator Clarence Kooistra, Republican of Garretson, who added that he represented the "silent majority" of South Dakotans who would not approve outlawing abortion nearly entirely.

Leaders of a movement against abortion rights in this state said they had raised $1 million in donations to help pay for the legal fight ahead.

"I didn't want money to be the reason people wouldn't vote for this bill," said Leslee J. Unruh, founder and president of the Abstinence Clearinghouse in Sioux Falls, who said she could not disclose the identities of those who had pledged money. "We're concerned with the 800 children aborted here every year."

After the vote, Kate Looby, state director of Planned Parenthood, left the statehouse promising to press Mr. Rounds to veto the bill.

"I'm very hopeful that he will be a voice of reason in this process and will choose the health and safety of the women of South Dakota over the political tool that this bill was designed to be," Ms. Looby said.

Failing that, she said, Planned Parenthood will sue, and it expects that a court will block the law from going into effect, while the case makes its way through the courts, a process that could take years.

"It scares me," Ms. Looby said, "to think that may in fact be the reality for my daughter's generation."

[Doreen Peri]

I can just see it now.

Some states will outlaw abortion. Others won't.

Women will travel many miles to go to the states which do not outlaw abortions in order to get one legally.

Those who are underpriveleged (donno if I spelled it right but a better term would be POOR) and cannot afford to travel to the states where abortion is legal will end up in back rooms and alleyways dying from unsanitary conditions as they attempt to do the procedure themselves.

This is a major step backwards for sure.

Don't get me wrong. I do not like abortion. But sometimes it is necessary for a variety of reasons and so I am definitely pro-choice.

My brother-in-law created a poster ad for an organization some time back. I think it was this organization
http://www.naral.org/
But I'm not sure because it was quite a few years ago.

Anyway, the poster was a photograph of a person's hand holding a bent wire hanger. Black background, a hand, a wire hanger.

I thought it was a hard-hitting piece of marketing. It really said it all.

Thanks for the news, Deb.

I didn't hear about this.

[Zlatko Waterman]

..

[e_dog]

Z-ko,

can you explain what these statements mean:

Alito was a small step in the corporate takeover of abortion.

and

The irony in some of this is the argument that Ross Perot couldn't have made a good president because he was JUST a businessman.

i think the best thing that can haappen from all this is for the court to allow states to ban abortion. the women's movt and liberals generaly have gotten lazy. actually, the best would be a DRAFT. after that, abortion will do just fine.

Enter: Politics.

!Viva la revolucion!


e

[stilltrucking]

I wonder how many women in the SD legislature. THis is going to keep happening until women have equal reprsentation in elected office from the state through federal.


e-dog on an unrelated note
I feel that way about the deal with the ports. Let him veto it. Nice issue for moderate republicans to join with dems to over ride it. Cut him down a couple notches. Encourage the people who know the truth to step forward. Impeachment next step.



picture credit

http://www.zombietime.com/walk_for_life/

[abcrystcats]

the senators rejected pleas to add exceptions for incest or rape or for the health of the pregnant woman and instead voted, 23 to 12, to outlaw all abortions, except those to save the woman's life.

This is a nice touch.

Suggesting that women don't have the rights to determine what happens to their own bodies. Suggesting that even male CRIMINALS (rapists, child molestors) have more power over what happens to OUR bodies than WE do.

This is FUCKED.

Anyone who supports this is NOT my friend. They are on my big SHIT list. This is in spite of the fact that I am 45 years old and as unlikely to mother a human child through ANY means as a CAT.

Don't make me DO it if you've impregnated me via rape or incest. But this prescription would make pregnancy by RAPE an enforceable legal condition.

Fuck THAT.

I fight this.

Bush and his idiots can go screw themselves.

[mnaz]

Amen, Laurie.

I have that fire inside of me, as do you.
It should be obvious by now.
That's what we keep saying...

[mtmynd]

South Dakota. Frigging South Dakota! Who the fuck gives a rat's ass about South-fucking-Dakota?? But here we go.... the Supreme Court is stacked. What better time?

Unbelievable. When abortion became legal I was in my early 20's. I remember all too well what brought on legalization - back street abortions, women dying from improper medical care, bleeding to death... infections... the horror of perfectly innocent young women going into dismal surroundings to stop their pregnancies. All these things were highly publicized and brought to light the need to legalize abortion under clean and sanitary conditions... safe and quick procedures.

The years have passed, new generation of people that have no idea the true, underlying reason for legalizing abortion. Public opinion has unrooted the rights of women, even by women themselves. Fear of God... 'His' revenge upon every woman that dares think of aborting an unwanted child under any circumstances! Such bullshit!!

In a world clearly overpopulated and underfed, undernourished, living in poverty, unable to provide for themselves much less another child, the Evangelicals and Conservatives want... no! demand that every impregnated woman go full term with their pregnancies! Who pays for the childs welfare, their health and education, in these times when this same government reduces welfare programs, reduces educational loans, reduces the middleclass economy..?

These times are so fucked up... chaos ruling logic, illusions over reality... what can one do? People seem so scared, worse it's ever been in our memory, since Dubya squeezed his regime through the White House doors. When will the people demand this country for themselves and no longer give unlimited power to those that care only for the very few amongst us? Abort this presidency! Abort this Congress! Abort this Supreme Court!

[mnaz]

South Dakota. Frigging South Dakota! Who the fuck gives a rat's ass about South-fucking-Dakota??

You would, if you lived there....

Abort this presidency!

yeah.... speakin' my language, here......

[mtmynd]

Mnaz -

You would, if you lived there....

Not a chance! I'd be living in Seattle!!

[abcrystcats]

In a world clearly overpopulated and underfed, undernourished, living in poverty, unable to provide for themselves much less another child, the Evangelicals and Conservatives want... no! demand that every impregnated woman go full term with their pregnancies! Who pays for the childs welfare, their health and education, in these times when this same government reduces welfare programs, reduces educational loans, reduces the middleclass economy..?

Well said.

I've been trying to picture the Brave New World ahead, when the only recourse a woman will have to prevent pregnancy is celibacy --or maybe, with these inclusions for rape and incest -- not even that.

I've talked to SO many young women who have intelligently decided NOT to have children, because they've personally experienced the hardships women face in attempting to raise children as single parents, or in dual income homes. What will they do?

I see the abortion issue as the thin edge of a much larger attempt to handicap women and disempower them.

If it was just abortion and if this legislation made provisions for victims of violent crimes, I tell you honestly that it wouldn't be so scary for me. But when I see similar attacks made on the rights of women to obtain birth control, simultaneous to the attack on Roe v. Wade, then I get very scared.

Abortion is a tough ethical question with a lot of gray areas. I teetered on the fence about it for a long time before I finally came down on the pro-choice side. And I didn't do it with bang, but with a miserable whimper of protest.

But a bill that doesn't even provide for abortion in cases of rape and incest is a direct attack on women. It's pure hate. Misogyny at its ugliest and most primitive.

I'm shrivelling away from this in sheer disbelief.

Watching the Christian Right take over this country is beginning to look awfully familiar. I've got about two feet of books on the Nazi takeover and the Holocaust and if anyone wants to get prepared what's potentially ahead of us in this country, they might do a little reading in that direction.

Sorry to be so negative, but it doesn't look good to me at all from this angle.

If anyone can shed some logical light on why the bill doesn't provide for victims of violent crimes, I'd like to hear it. I'd welcome any reason not to believe that this is the result of misogyny.
Please help.

[abcrystcats]

One slightly bright thought: South Dakota is one of the poorest and least powerful states in the union.

There will almost certainly be costly legal expenses associated with this, and maybe South Dakota won't have the funds to see the thing through to the end.

[bohonato]

Abortion is a tough ethical question with a lot of gray areas. I teetered on the fence about it for a long time before I finally came down on the pro-choice side. And I didn't do it with bang, but with a miserable whimper of protest.

Exactly how I feel. Personally I am pro-life. But politically I have to say that I am pro-choice. Pregnancy is something that I will never have to go through.

And, honestly, and I have thought long and hard on this, I do not regard fetuses (feti?) as human beings. I've had friends who argue that you are stopping a potential human life. So is a condom.

The angriest I have ever been is when someone kept calling me pro-abortion. I continued to insist that I'm pro-choice, since the right to choose is the issue, not the abortion. In my mind it is about stopping women from doing it with a hanger, cause abortions will not stop if you make them illegal.

It hurts when you believe firmly in life (I'm a fucking pacifist) and some one keeps shouting that you are a murderer. And worst was they wouldn't let me explain myself.

[stilltrucking]

Pregnancy is something that I will never have to go through.

That is how I feel too.

I dread abortions. It almost makes me nauseous to think about them. But I do not think male politicians should be making that decision for a woman.

If I had a daughter, I would want her to be able to make that decision for herself. I wonder if G W and Laura's wild girls have ever made that decision.

This is not about abortion. It is about power and men who are terrified of losing their grip on it.


888888888888888

dam this has nothing to do with this string, I should delete it and put it on AB's death penalty string.
When I asked you about if you have ever turned the other cheek I was not thinking of an unkind remark. I meant has any one hit you upside the head with a two by four and how did you deal with it?
I am a pacifist too, but only up to a point. I think I have some right to self defense, I will not turn my cheek to another whack upside the head .

[mnaz]

Personally I am pro-life. But politically I have to say that I am pro-choice......... It hurts when you believe firmly in life (I'm a fucking pacifist) and some one keeps shouting that you are a murderer. And worst was they wouldn't let me explain myself.

Well said. I hear that......