South Dakota's Obvious Move

It was inevitable. With the confirmation of Alito to Bush's Reichsgericht, once known as the Supreme Court of the United States, some band of Republicans in a backwater state would attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade. The radical Christian Clerics Ayatollah Robertson and Grand Mullah Dobson must be cackling at their victory. Here's what happened: A bunch of rich men in business suits in whatever the capital of So. Dak. is decided it was time to close the State's only abortion clinic and stop the 800 baby killings and call it a bold stroke for God and country. Now these guys, when their daughters come up "in a family way" can afford to fly to France or Amsterdam or that den of iniquity Denver to, ahem, undergo a necessary medical treatment. The Republicans and Christian Ayatollahs didn't allow that luxury for little Betty Lou in the back country. The law passed by the South Dakota radical christians didn't allow exceptions to the ban for rape or incest.

That means Daddy's Little Girl gets to bear Daddy's Little Grandbaby. Daddy's Little Grandbaby can look forward to more that sitting on Granddaddy's lap but they don't care: They mandated another birth. Right to life is something completely different, whatever happens to the little slut and her bastard after they're born is social Darwinism at work, excuse me, just. They're cutting education, they're cutting food stamps, they're cutting energy assistance but by God the Republicans will see the baby born. Likewise a rape victim will not only have to bear the child of the rapist but will under South Dakota law have to defend from having her rapist have visitation rights or even custody of her rape child. You call that right to life? It's a mandate of birth and no more.

And yet it doesn't affect the majority of South Dakotans any more than it affects the majority of Coloradans. Perhaps we should do away with Roe v. Wade and allow backwaters like South Dakota to pass right to birth legislation. One noteworthy part of the measure is that it's not illegal for a woman to have an abortion, it's illegal for a doctor to perform one. So the, ahem, menstrually irregular Republican daughters who are no more likely to hold an aspirin between their knees than Farmer Brown's daughter can go to Calgary and have an, ahem, medically necessary procedure without fear of the law.

But God help the doctor who relieves Farmer Brown's daughter of Farmer Brown's child.

The law's greatest provision, paradoxically, is the omission of an exception for rape or incest because I don't think even the Court of the Radical Right can uphold an abortion statute without that exception. I may be wrong: Scalito and Roberts may be ideologues enough to uphold the statute despite its problems. I'd give it about a 50-50 chance of going down in flames. That's about fifty percent more chance of survival than the law deserves.

For the record, I am not in favor of abortion, rather contraception. But in no way do I possess the wisdom or the hubris to try to impose my moral code on anyone else, nor would I stand in the way of a woman's right to control her own reproduction. Abortion may or may not be wrong in any individual's belief system, but no Christian Ayatollah or Mullah has the right to prohibit it, particularly one who can never become pregnant. I believe humanity to be something a bit more than having human DNA. A ball of cells in a uterus is not human: It can't live on its own nor does it have the nervous system of a nematode. It has the potential to become a human but many don't, even those that have gone to term and grown to adulthood.