I have always suspected that for the misogynists in the anti-abortion movement, banning abortion is not so much about saving the life of an unborn child as it is about punishing the pregnant woman. If abortion is an outcome they frown upon, one would think that they would be in favor of making all means of contraception available to women. But as I wrote in a previous post, it has become increasingly clear to me and others that for some, it is women's sexuality which is the problem. Their opposition to not just abortion but also contraception, makes sense only if one understands how they view preganancy. It is almost as if being pregnant and giving birth is a means to curtail women's freedom, a punishment, a just retribution for profligacy - there is nothing joyful about it nor is it a celebration of life. Unwillingness to give birth is viewed as a criminal act and if they could, they would incarcerate women for that "crime". The two articles below illustrate my point - the authors explain well the motives behind the methods.
Enough of sorry politics on Plan B birth control :
"Time and again in my travels I am asked, "What happened to derail Plan B?" I have to answer honestly that I don't know. The manufacturer agreed to take the "controversial" issue of young teens' access to emergency contraception off the table in 2004; now we are talking only about adult access to safe and effective contraception. Over 98 percent of adult women have used some form of contraception. So what is the objection?
Perhaps it is that posed by a small but vocal political minority that insists on labeling emergency contraception as abortion, or at least confusing the two. One of the main questions I hear is, "Does this pill cause an abortion?" In fact, the only connection this pill has with abortion is that it has the potential to prevent the need for one. Emergency contraceptive pills work exactly the same way as other birth control pills, and they do not interfere with or harm an existing pregnancy.....
Plan B emergency contraception available over the counter, so that women, including rape victims, could have a second chance to prevent an unintended pregnancy and the need for an abortion. How many chances have we missed? I still can't explain what is going on here, and why women 17 and older are still denied this product in a timely way. When did adult access to contraception become controversial? And why have we allowed it to happen?"
The truth S.D. lawmakers won't tell on abortion law :
"Monday the governor of South Dakota signed into law a bill that would ban virtually all abortions in the state. Neither the governor nor any of the law's supporters, however, have been honest about what the cost and effect of such a law will be. Those who authored this bill and those who voted for it want to create the impression that only the people providing the abortions will be punished, not the women having them. They are not brave enough or honest enough to admit what is clear: Women will be punished, and they and their families will suffer if this law goes into effect.
South Dakota, like many other states, has adopted numerous laws that seek to establish the unborn as full legal persons. For example, South Dakota has a feticide statute that makes the killing of an "unborn child" at any stage of prenatal development fetal homicide, manslaughter or vehicular homicide, as well as a law that requires doctors to tell women that an abortion ends the life of "a whole, separate, unique living human being." The new law banning virtually all abortions states that it is based on the conclusion "that life begins at the time of conception," and that "each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization."
If the unborn are legal persons, as numerous South Dakota laws assert, then a pregnant woman who has an abortion can be prosecuted as a murderer under already existing homicide laws. Farfetched? Not at all.....
Prosecutors all over the country have been experimenting with this approach for years. In South Carolina, Regina McKnight is serving a 12-year sentence for homicide by child abuse. Why? Because she suffered an unintentional stillbirth. The prosecutors said she caused the stillbirth by using cocaine, yet, they did not charge her with having an illegal abortion — a crime that in South Carolina has a three-year sentence. Rather, they charged and convicted her of homicide — a crime with a 20- year sentence. They obtained this conviction in spite of evidence that McKnight's stillbirth was caused by an infection.
Thus far, South Carolina is the only state whose courts have upheld the legitimacy of such prosecutions. But in fact, women in states across the country, including South Dakota, have already been arrested as child abusers or murderers — without any new legislation authorizing such arrests. In Oklahoma, Teresa Hernandez is sitting in jail on first-degree murder charges for having suffered an unintentional stillbirth. In Utah, a woman was charged with murder based on the claim that she caused a stillbirth by refusing to have a C-section earlier in her pregnancy.
If women are now being arrested as murderers for having suffered unintentional stillbirths, one should assume that in South Dakota's post-Roe world intentional abortions would be punished just as seriously.
South Dakota lawmakers don't want their constituents to know or face the likely results of their actions. Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, notes that federal and state law enforcement agencies have grown significantly in the past 30 years. He warns that in states where abortion is recriminalized, people should expect strict enforcement with the use of stings, informants, wiretaps, computers and databases to gather evidence and obtain guilty pleas....
I think that the South Dakotans have no idea what they have done, but my personal tear has to do with the fact that they allowed rapists to retain parental rights (voted down in committee 11 - 0), thus presenting victims with a monstrous choice: Stay teathered to the rapist throughout your childs life, or give the child up...potentially to the rapist.
Boggles the mind.
Posted by: Kvatch | March 08, 2006 at 07:45 PM
I'd be curious to know if those South Carolina charges could hold up on a federal appeal. Wouldn't there be constitutional issues with declaring a fetus to be a legal person?
Posted by: Joe | March 09, 2006 at 01:52 AM
I cannot authoritatively answer the legal ramifications of the abortion politics being played out in state courts. But consider the harrassment index of these legislations, clearly meant to intimidate women.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | March 09, 2006 at 10:22 AM
It's horrifying. I'm not sure which part is worse, that they're now claiming it's murder to (intentionally) *cause* a stillbirth, or that in practice they're convicting women of murder for (accidentally) *having* stillbirths.
Posted by: Joe | March 09, 2006 at 12:09 PM
That there are very much "constitutional issues with declaring a [non-viable] fetus to be a legal person" is precisely the SD legislature's point. The legislation is a slap in the face to the standing case law on abortion. It was explicitly intended as a shoot-the-moon attempt to bait the Supreme Court, newly fortified in its conservatism by Roberts and Alito, into overturning Roe v. Wade. Even many pro-lifers think that, as legal strategy, this was a stupid move. While, the specific case law, Supreme Court history, and the new Justices' records support the potential for success in chipping away at abortion rights (through parental notification, spousal notification, waiting periods, etc.), they all point against the potential for success of such an obvious move.
To use a comparison where I can better get behind the challengers: even Brown v. Board of Education did not actually overturn the "separate but equal" doctrine under which Plessy v. Ferguson found racial segregation in trains legal. Rather, after the NAACP had laid a careful groundwork of cases in less controversial settings, such as graduate education, it obtained a decision from the Court that Plessy's doctrine of separate but equal "has no place in the field of public education." Schools are different from trains, see?
There may actually be people in South Dakota stupid enough to think this ploy will work. Though I seriously doubt it, God forbid, they may even be right. Even then they may have bitten off more than they can chew, since a majority of the American public thinks that abortion should be legal, but regulated-- as it is now-- and I think overturning Roe in support of such an ugly law and ugly political move would cause even more of a backlash than the Roe decision itself did.
Much as with the various gay-bashing bills developed in 2004, I can't help reading this law as a cynical election year ploy by these bozos, with the stated purpose holding only a secondary place under the reasoning that, if it works, heh, it'll be a win-win situation. Under either rationale, it seems to me a perfect example of why the right to choice needs to be left at the national level (I'm indifferent as to whether under the current Constitutional case law or some other mechanism-- I have no particular love of the Roe decision, except in effect), rather than made a plaything of state legislatures.
Posted by: Anna | March 09, 2006 at 07:33 PM