People often seem confused when I say that I’m anti-abortion and pro-choice. We don’t much care for ideas too nuanced to wear a convenient ready-made label. Reasonableness is seen as a sign of weakness. Today, South Dakota has struck the latest deliberately unreasonable blow in the battle over abortion:
South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds signed a bill Monday that bans nearly all abortions in the state, legislation in direct conflict with the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in 1973.
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State lawmakers had rejected proposed amendments that would have made exceptions for rape or incest.
Last week the PBS NewsHour reported on the ban. Reporter Fred de Sam Lazaro asked about exceptions under the new law:
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: [South Dakota state senator Bill] Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls “convenience.” He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother’s life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.
BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
He certainly sets the bar high, doesn’t he? Yet the actual language of South Dakota’s new law does not allow even the type of exception Napoli describes. Allowing abortion for his brutalized, raped religious virgin would be too “convenient.”
(Crooks and Liars has video from the NewsHour report.)
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