Throwing down the gauntlet on abortion

From Where I Sit...

By Bradley Hart

I’VE GOT TO hand it to South Dakota. The “Mount Rushmore State” staked its claim to history this week by becoming the first state in recent memory to completely outlaw abortion. If I had to bet money a week ago, I probably would have predicted that the first state to pass such legislation would be in the Bible Belt South, not the comparatively populist Upper Midwest.

Yet now South Dakota has assured its place in contemporary and possibly constitutional history by passing a law that is clearly intended to challenge legal precedent.

The state’s legislature passed the bill that will effectively outlaw virtually all abortions in the state earlier this month and Republican Governor Mike Rounds put his stamp of approval Monday.

The new law defines life as “originating at the time of conception” and declares abortion to be illegal without any exceptions for the health of the mother or under circumstances like rape or incest.

According to Planned Parenthood officials, around a dozen other states are considering similar legislation.
There’s a number of problems and contradictions and interesting thought questions within the law itself.

Doctors who break the new law will face up to five years in prison, although the mother of the aborted fetus can’t be charged with any crime. If life truly begins at conception, shouldn’t those who end it be charged with homicide? Furthermore, under this logic, what kind of charges would an arsonist who burned down a fertility clinic, thus destroying potentially thousands of fertilized eggs, face? Mass murder?

If a rescue worker had to choose between saving a petri dish full of fertilized embryos and a small child, which should he choose?

At the heart of it, the South Dakota law is not intended to actually punish doctors who perform abortions, although you can be sure there will be prosecutions if only to generate the inevitable legal challenge.

Those challenges will go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will almost certainly proceed to hear the first direct challenge to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Then the real political maneuvering will begin. Remember that pro-life President Bush has made two appointments to the Court – one of whom replaced Sandra Day O’Connor who was long considered to be the “swing vote” on such issues.

Whether or not Justices Roberts and, more crucially, Alito have the political will to overturn the decision will largely determine the future of the ruling, assuming the other justices stick to their previous rulings on similar abortion-rights cases.

It’s far too soon to say if Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned. Any legal appeal is years away from hitting the high court and any number of things can happen by then. If the high court in fact overturns Roe v. Wade, the issue of abortion’s legality will presumably go back to the individual states – unless Congress steps in with legislation to ban the procedure nationally. This might seem unlikely on the face of the nation’s divided political climate – but keep in mind that abortion is the biggest issue driving the Religious Right to the polls each election cycle. It was this voting block that re-elected President Bush in 2004 and continues to keep the Republican majority in Congress.

It will be interesting to see what happens when Congressmen and the President (assuming there’s a Republican administration when the case is finally settled) do when they’re faced with pressure from their base to pass such legislation.

No matter what your opinion is on abortion, you have to give South Dakota some credit. The lonely northerly state, 46th-most populated in the nation, has thrust itself into the spotlight with a piece of legislation that’s so draconian it fails to take into account the life of a woman who will die if she doesn’t have an abortion.

Regardless of what happens with Roe v. Wade, Monday was truly a date that will live in infamy for South Dakota — and possibly America’s female population as a whole.

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