State of the nation
Photoshopped South Dakota state logo by TheeErin (flickr)
Isn’t it rich? The “straight laces” in South Dakota continually strive to proscribe abortion there, so of course South Dakota women can be compared to Muslim women oppressed by their male overlords! It’s safe to speculate that the “artist” doesn’t know much about life behind the burqa, but she does appear to know a bit about moral equivalence, particularly the more absurd varieties.
In the last thirty-five years since Roe v. Wade there have been almost fifty million abortions performed in our great nation, roughly the equivalent of the combined populations of a dozen of our least populous states like South Dakota. There’s one state, however—and only one state—where there are no abortions being performed at all, at least temporarily. There aren’t any burkas being worn there either, although there are a few hijabs on display.
Can you guess which state?
If you’ve heard of South Dakota’s relentless persistence in attempting to pass legislation banning abortions, you probably guessed correctly about America’s only abortion-free state, but you’d be wrong to suppose that the current situation there is due to any prohibition as such. It was a much less restrictive piece of legislation that has the state’s imported abortion practitioners staying home in Minnesota instead of terminating pregnancies in South Dakota. Imported doctors? Yes, you read right: South Dakota’s only operating abortion clinic in Sioux Falls has been staffed by Minneapolis physicians who fly in to serve the state’s scandalously uncovered women. But on Monday, July 21st, the first day on which abortion clinics would need to comply with the new law’s “informed consent” provisions, the doctors did not fly into Sioux Falls.
Women with appointments that day weren’t previously notified about the cancellation, so they showed up to find the doors to the clinic closed. Planned Parenthood, which operates the clinic, lied as usual by insisting to the press that abortions were still being performed, and they added that the law outrageously intrudes on sacrosanct doctor-patient relationships, which I imagine is a real concern when that intimate relationship is between a patient in one state and a doctor in another. Relations between doctors and patients are in fact so intimate at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls that one woman with an early appointment was left to wonder what her doctor was thinking, so she returned later in the day to see if maybe he had showed up for work after all.
The legislation in question was passed and signed into law by Governor Mike Rounds in 2005, but it took effect only last month when it was affirmed on appeal by the Eight Circuit Court. The law requires patient notifications similar to those proposed from time to time in other states, including provisions to inform the woman that she is terminating a human life and to apprise her about attendant risks and complications from the procedure. Presumably—or at least this is how it has generally been reported—it was the “offensive” language of the required notifications the physicians found so repugnant that they simply couldn’t comply in conscience, especially the required information that “the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”
They may be able to fool the gullible masses, but they’re wasting their time trying to persuade the great Haid Dasalami of their professional integrity.
As incendiary as those words may be to abortion-rights advocates, my take is that they had little to do with the decision to suspend the practice of terminating pregnancies at the clinic. This is one of those classic situations where following the money produces the straightest line on the map, and it is revealing that the few official statements emanating from Planned Parenthood all cite the state’s unwarranted intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship. Nothing in the new law circumscribes the doctors’ free-speech rights, so abortionists could simply provide the required notifications along with a comment that they don’t agree with them. They could, that is, just characterize the government’s notifications as propaganda by the “straight laces” in Pierre. Few women in desperate circumstances will actually change their minds, is my guess, and the money will still change hands in the overwhelming majority of cases. Right?
Not exactly. You see, the doctors can’t simply deny the risk factors (a few dozen such factors have been medically documented!) that they are required to disclose under the new law, since this would certainly open them up to liability should things go awry, as they often do. Further, even if they just disseminated the information among all the usual paperwork, it could therefore be alleged in court that the doctors were aware of risk factors for which they almost certainly did not screen while establishing that oh-so-sacred doctor-patient trust they allege exists even across state lines. These guys are traveling butchers—no more, no less—and they spend a good deal more time at the cash register than they do at the counseling couch. They may be able to fool the gullible masses, but they’re wasting their time trying to persuade the great Haid Dasalami of their professional integrity.
Unable to convince the Appeals Court that the government’s definition of human life is untrue, misleading, or irrelevant to the woman’s decision, the doctors have chosen for now simply to take their ball and go home. As for the law’s “offensive language,” they could care less about it, because this isn’t about what they believe. It’s about what they do and don’t do. Young women regularly show up on their doorstep who have been pressured into an abortion by parents, boyfriends, or peers, and the clinic provides them with virtually no counseling or concrete alternatives. (The law also provides that patients be apprised about these alternatives, including the information that the father is responsible for support of the child after birth, and in South Dakota they mean it). All this is summarily characterized by Planned Parenthood as placing undue impediments on the woman’s exercise of her constitutional rights, but it seems obvious to me that they’re really concerned about the obstacles placed in front of the bank—and especially about their own liability for damages after the fact.
No matter which side of the abortion debate you find yourself on, I know what you’re thinking. “This is all fascinating, Haid, but what does it have to do with the focus of this weblog, which is supposedly Islamo-fascism and the global jihad?” Funny you should ask, because if you think the culture war and the values debate are irrelevant to our ability to survive the ferocious onslaught of Islamic fanaticism, you and I disagree about a lot more than abortion or other individual issues, even if we disagree about them vehemently. At the beginning of this year, Vasko Kohlmayer published an essay in The American Thinker titled, “Why American Evangelicals are the West’s Last Hope.” It’s an excellent article, but I would frame his conclusion a bit more broadly, as I have here in the past: “As goes the Christian faith, so goes the fate of western civilization.”
Demographically speaking, South Dakota is situated smack dab in the heart of the Bible belt, and it is thus a key battleground in the culture wars. This November, Governor Rounds and the South Dakota legislature will try once again to outlaw abortions by vote of the people, and this time they have included exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. The absence of these few exceptions in a similar measure decided by voters two years ago is believed to be responsible for the law’s arguably narrow defeat at the polls. It remains to be seen how the proposed ban will fare now that it has been tweaked to include these rare exceptions, but there can be no doubt that the “straight laces” in Pierre intend nothing short of a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade itself, and they’d like nothing better than to wind up their arguments in the US Supreme Court, where like-minded Justices Roberts, Alito, and Thomas await them. That Mike Rounds and his colleagues have hit on language and tactics that the federal judiciary is for now unable to counter is no insignificant matter.
If you tend toward optimism about our future, America’s first abortion-free state should be of great solace and hope regarding the fate of our nation—indeed, even of the future of our great, but precarious, civilization. So watch South Dakota. The battle brewing there just could be the barometer of our larger struggles.
16 comments
Haid, when I was preggers the second time ( I miscarried the first time) Hubster and I decided to go to Planned Parenthood, because we naively thought that Planned Parenthood would help us become better parents. When the doctor came out and told us we were pregnant, she assumed I wanted to schedule an abortion. When I - aghast- said “Of course not!” She seemed both disappointed and surprised. She asked if we really wanted to keep it. Shocked, I said, of course! We’re married!
She said, and I kid thee not, “That never happens.”
Unfortunately, and I forgot to mention this, I lost the second child, too. And it was on our 3rd anniversary. We went into the emergency room and the doctor, let’s just call him Andropov, heh,
said, when I, in tears, and crying from the searing pain ( I was 12 weeks pregnant) said, ” Oh quit crying. It isn’t like you’re having a real baby.
Touching memories. Oh well. 3rd time worked like a charm. We got twins!
Sra - that last is one of the most f’d up stories I’ve seen. What ever happened to compassion, and “FIRST, DO NO HARM”? Praise God for #3 (and 4!)!
Haid - it’s a good thing these laws were challenged in the 8th circuit and not the 9th. The lefty fanatics there would have come up with some convoluted concoction in order to overrule. Thanks for enlightening me about S.D. I will keep an eye on this.
Best to you.
~GdB
Sra–We (Mrs. Dasalami and I) had a very similar situation with our first. We were living on campus–I in graduate school, and she a sophomore–when she went to the campus clinic to get the news. Nurse Ratchet DID do a bit of counseling with her, urging her strenuously to get an abortion for the sake of her “young man.” She swore having the baby would wreck our lives, especially since I was a TA with some promise.
Guess what? She was right, in a way. Mrs. Dasalami never completed her degree and I eventually dropped out of graduate school.
But we have, of course, been able to live with ourselves, and our children.
God–I was thinking the same thing about the luck of the draw, but I was still shocked that the ingenious law wasn’t struck down.
And yes, I can understand how you’re interested in watching the situation develop in SD. The battle is just heating up.
And, as I say, it’s not at all irrelevant to the big picture.
Best regards,
HAID
Scherzo, you did a poor job of proofreading for me. I just found and corrected about a dozen terrible typos and other errors.
Never blog while putting out domestic fires, I guess–or watching the Olympics!
For what, exactly, do I pay you?
Must be the pithy comments.
Errows? Errows? There are no errows, only spellling and grammatickle oponions, my friend.
Oh yeah, I wanted to know how good you are with css. I am trying to change the font in my banner, and add some background art with the title overlaid. The current font is blah, and blogger only gives six other variations of blah. I downloaded a font that was more like I wanted, but if I can’t use it, I suppose I could use a true type font like Black Adder or Curlz MT.
Are u gonna write about the women in SD dying from coathangers??? South Burkhota–I think its perfect. Just like i think yur a perfect ass.
Oh puleeeze! Joe, you ignorant slut. You have no idea just how many girls die from safe. legal. abortions! Abortion is legal, even in SD. Hell, in KS you can get a third term abortion in Wichita. No protesters, no laws, no bills pending, no nothing have been able to stop the legalized late term abortion mill of Wichita. The problem with a lot of abortion clinics is that while they are legal in all 50 states, many of them are so substandard and unclean, they seldom make the news because that would prove that safe legal abortions are safe, and they aren’t. This is why most doctors won’t do medically unnecessary abortions, either. And since you want to talk about those poor poor women, try talking about the women who have had abortions, who are plagued with remorse and guilt. I know plenty of them. Thirty year olds and forty year olds, barren, unhappy women, many of them. Wondering if the child who might have lived would have accomplished something in life, married, had children of their own. Payback really is a bitch. There’s no remorse like buyer’s remorse.
And that brings us back to the abortion patients’ right to know what is potentially involved in this irreversible decision. All the cards are on the table. Everything laid out. There is no sustainable argument against informing a woman who might be making a panicked decision just what the fallout could be.
Right now, the only women who seem most concerned about ‘their right’ to have an abortion are the sixty year old hags of the now irrelevant womyn’s lib movement.
Hypocrites that they are, they are too busy marching in DC with their coat hangers to give a damn about what happens to women and girls in Islam. They, having murdered their own off spring in order to prove their political metal are left without heirs of their insane doctrines. I say good riddance to the lot of them.
LOL. Thanks, Scherzo. While I was busy getting out the blogburst, you were mopping up with Joe.
And you said it. There can be no credible argument against informed consent.
Astonishingly, even a federal appeals court agrees.
Joe,
For once, I’m speechless.
Regards,
HAID
Esteemed One,
Another superb post.
I thought SD’s previous no-exceptions legislation was a mistake, as it proved to be in the event. As Burke said: politics is the art of the possible. I imagine the new attempt, which throws a bone to those who remain squeamish over unlikely extremes, has a much better chance. But there remain a number of ifs and issues: If the legislation passes, and if it is then challenged in the Supreme Court, are there enough justices who would likely side with the defendant? And if so, would it necessarily entail overturning R v W? I don’t know.
If I understand your position correctly, it is precisely the secularization of the culture that leaves it vulnerable to the pressure and predation of a militant Islam. Affirming the Right to Life offers a bulwark not merely against the further marginalization of Christianity within the US, but against an alien culture that rightly despises one that stands basically for nothing, and so offers little resistance to one that takes a strong, but alien, stand. It is ironic: the secular left has been busy building barricades against imagined enemies within (i.e. the churches –which, among other things, defend the freedom the left enjoys) and put up no ramparts against the real dangers without (militant Islam, for which the Left bends over backwards to excuse). The Left’s capacity for moral equivalence, as you point out, leaves it incapable of distinguishing real differences and identifying real dangers.
I find it amusing as well to see the predicament of the Left, hoist by its own petard: its twin stalwarts –the trial lawyers and the abortionists– played off against each other. The latter unable to tell the truth to their clients lest at some remove they find themselves prey to the former.
Regards
Darryl
The only absolute for moral relativists is tolerance. That is why they are such cowards. They are afraid of being thought of as intolerant. Not that they ARE, in their own minds, intolerant. Just that they are afraid, deathly afraid of others’ perceptions. I like the imagery of them being hoist on their own petard: twin stalwarts, all right, like two tall towers fabricated from Jenga blocks. They grow taller and feebler with every brick removed and placed elsewhere.
Thanks, Darryl. I approve your understanding of my position, and in fact I understand it a lot better myself now that you’ve explained it to me.
I’m not sure I agree that the no-exceptions legislation that went to referendum two years ago was a mistake, although I felt that way myself then. But now I see that the “straight laces” in Pierre have a long-term strategy. As Michael Phelps showed us, it’s all in how you finish. Politics should also be the art of standing for something, and of standing till the end.
So, yes, it’s questionable how successful they can be–Roe v. Wade isn’t just any sacred cow–but at least the straight laces have committed to fighting this fight. They’re calling out the biggest bully on the block and hitting ‘im with everything they’ve got. They’re a model to the world. This should be being done by good people everywhere.
If we can’t even beat “doctors” who take the red-eye across the state line to perform a few scheduled snip jobs before their afternoon junket home–wham, bang, thank you, ma’am–we truly are doomed, and if we have no will to exterminate pathetic vermin like these among us, what chance do we have against stronger foes?
And, yes, I too find their predicament amusing.
Regards,
HAID
Sra,
What a terrific image: Jenga blocks. I know what you’re talking about, but I didn’t know what they’re called.
BTW, there’s one thing the New Agers will not tolerate, and that’s intolerance.
They will brook no failure to brook.
The only sin is calling a spade a spade.
The filthiest abominations are okey dokey with them.
But don’t have a contrary opinion or, God forbid, a scruple.