I can’t fucking believe this. South Dakota is going to try to ban ALL abortion except those that threaten the life of the mother (not even serious health complications are exempted).
Not only are they blatantly ignoring firmly established Supreme Court precedent, they are wasting the taxpayers money defending a bill that will definitely be struck down.
I’d write more to express my outrage, but words fail me right now.
Welcome to an election year. Don’t forget the massive increase in spending we’ll see at all levels, the tax cuts that will prevent us from paying for it, the pointless increase in penalties for innocuous crimes, and the bazillion “Anyone who Doesn’t Vote for This Bill and the Various Spending Riders in it is a Puppy Rapist” acts. For the moment it doesn’t matter. If the Supreme Court makeup shifts before it gets up there, however, it could be a problem.
Even rape victims fall under the ban! Do they honestly want to force rape victims to give birth to the child of the man that raped them?
Good, let them. Abortion will be banned, securing South Dakota’s place as the “Georgia of the North,” lawsuits will fly, tourism will plummet, the ban will be repealed, the GOP legislators humiliated, shamed and ridiculed into political obscurity, more Dems elected throughout the state and goodness and enlightenment will rule the good people of South Dakota.
It would have to shift a LOT. The dissent in Casey was 4 Justices, but Byron White has since retired, so there are now only 3 votes to overturn it. (Remember that it would be Casey that would have to be overturned, since Roe is not really the law of the land anymore, the trimester framework was replaced in Casey.)
Scalia used much of his Lawrence dissent to lay the framework for overturning Casey, noting that stare decisis had been altered by the way in which Bowers was overturned. Whatever the argument, there are only 3 votes now, and I don’t see two of the pro-abortion justices retiring in the next couple years. More likely is that Rehnquist will retire, Bush will be forced to select a pro-abortion justice just to get him past the Senate, and then there wouldn’t even be enough votes to take cert.
Man: “Honey, lets go to South Dakota for a vacation this year! We could see Mount Rushmore and…and…um…canoe on the Missouri River?”
Woman: “No way! I mean, what if I needed an abortion while we’re up there, what would I do?”
Man: “Oh that’s right, I completely forgot. Well cross off South Dakota. You wanna just take another pilgrimage to the NARAL national headquarters suite?”
You’re forgetting that most pro-lifers don’t give two shits about the woman. She’s just an incubator. They just care about the embryo. Which means, yeah, they’d force a woman (at least in South Dakota) to carry the child of her rapist. After all, she should’ve been using protection! Shit, women should just start carrying condoms with them at all times, even if they’re not currently sexually active, just in case they get raped! If they don’t they’re just being irresponsible and deserve to have to carry the pregnancy to term.
Ah, such compassion.
:rolleyes:
Ummmm…no, that’s not it.
I’m pro-life (though with different consequences, as a pro-life libertarian), and I can say the one thing pro-life people agree on is that the unborn baby is a life that must be protected.
Once you arrive at the conclusion that it is a life, it is a pretty easy step to conclude that how that life came into existence would have very little to do with whether or not you can kill it. So the traditional extension of the conclusion that a fetus is a life is that abortion should be allowed only when the life of the mother is endangered (when the two rights to life come into conflict), but not when the life just happened to be created in an unsavory way (rape, incest.) In essence, under the traditional moral stance taken by most pro-lifers, if the baby is a human life then whether the sex that created it was consensual or non-consensual is irrelevant to the issue, because the abortion issue hinges entirely on the personhood question.
In my view, having concluded that both the baby and the mother have rights, I put this in a libertarian framework. The baby is alot like a passenger on a boat. If that passenger was invited (consensual sex) then you don’t have the right to just throw him overboard. If, however, the passenger is a trespasser you did not invite on board (rape), then he has no right to remain on your property and you can expel him.
Under my conception of rights, your right to life means you have a right not to be killed. However, one’s right to have his life sustained by continued positive action (the baby’s continued presence on the woman’s property) is only required when the person invited the burden upon themselves creating through their own action a situation in which the dependent must rely upon that sustainence. Thus I would have a rape exception, because the woman cannot be subjected to a positive obligation unless she herself created it. If one did not draw this distinction between positive/negative obligations and the required agency of the one burdened by them, and most people do not, then they would inevitably arrive at a simple life vs. life balancing test, to which rape would be irrelevant.
Of course, unless S.Dak closes its border with North Dakota, then there is nothing stopping a young woman from coming up here to have things taken care of.
At least our state Legeslators don’t kill motorcyclists.
Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched.
Thats the spirit. Think positive! 
Ah, such strawmen.
:rolleyes:
In all the years I was an outspoken member of the pro-life movement, the life of the mother was ALWAYS important. It had to be; if the mother isn’t safe, the baby isn’t safe. It may well be that you’ve known some ass-backward pro-lifers, but the general position put forth by reasonable, knowledgeable pro-lifers includes the inherent fact that the life of the mother is important. The aftereffects of an abortion, in particular, are important, for reasons that seem compassionate to some and “compassionate” to others. I’m sure a google search would go into plentiful detail on the effects (and side effects) of an abortion, though I doubt very much that one would be able to find a through nonpartisan list (i.e., something like “a precious life is lost to the world forever and a mother must go to confession to atone for the horrible sin of murder” is not something I’d identify as partisan).
I’d be really interested, just because “what if the child’s a product of rape or incest?” so often comes up, in seeing some reliable numbers (i.e. www.godhatesabortion.com wouldn’t be a good one) on the percent of reported rapes that resulted in pregnancy, and furthermore what percent of those resulted in pregnancy beyond a month or two (this might be most evident in the number of abortions performed on rape victims, but that’s just my guess).
Hmmmm. Is there room in this analogy for the non-ticketed guests who are invited to onboard “Bon Voyage” receptions, with the caveat that they must disembark prior to casting off? Otherwise, I’m a bit leery of defining every consensual act of sexual intercourse as an implicit invitation to a pregnancy/birth.
In other news, I seem to detect a bit of sleight of hand in your first paragraph (underlining mine):
Please tell me you are not asserting that acceptance of the fact that the fetus is alive is tantamount to accaptance the fetus is a person. Make the argument for personhood if you desire, but don’t just try to wave it into consensus.
I think he meant that once a pro-life person has come to this conclusion.
Woohoo!!! Go South Dakota!!!
Well, if you say so.
On second thought, I believe I’ll let RexDart come and make his own meaning clear. It is the libertarian thing to do, after all.
Ok, well, the next time a pro-life male (or female for that matter…I am addressing males in this rant-post, because to be obvious, most of our government IS male) with this view gets raped and gets pregnant from it, it’s A-OK with me that they be forced to carry a rape pregnancy to term and raise the child produced.
I suppose I just don’t get it, being female, and having been in the situation of being a victim of a violent crime for nothing more than being female.
Can any male pro-lifer explain to me why it matters, being a man,what your opinion is regarding rape after abortion, especially as regards MY body and mind? YOU (the hypothetical-or-not pro-life male) will never have to endure the consequences of your Great Moral Decision.
How would you feel if it was your wife? Raped, pregnant, forced to carry to term, and completely suicidal over it. Rape is one of the worst things any woman can ever have to cope with. I can speak, sadly, from experience here.
Think about what rape does to a woman’s mind, self-worth, self-esteem and confidence. Imagine being forced to deal with that violent event and re-living being a victim, every day, 24/7, while carrying a pregnancy stemming from it. Imagine having to look at, and trying to love and raise this child, being reminded 24/7, 365 days a year, that this child was the product of a violent, hateful act, that was inflicted on you, with none of your consent. Imagine that every time you looked at your child, all you felt was resentment. Resentment of the violent act inflicted on you, resentment of your lack of choice in the matter, and resentment of the government of men telling you you have NO right to take care of yourself, because all that matters is your unborn child, the product of violence and hate.
What if your wife was raped by a man who looked NOTHING like you or your wife, and she had a child that was the spitting image of the rapist? Would you be proud to explain the circumstances of your child’s conception to people? ("Well, my wife got raped, and I forced her to have the child. Damn thing’s cute as a button though, so we don’t mind a bit. Well, we tell my wife that when they let her come home from the institution on weekends, anyways.)
Imagine your wife having to look into the face and eyes of her rapist every time she picks up her child.
And people wonder why some women never bother to report rape incidents…
You think that’s a beginning or legacy any child would want?!?
sigh
Where I said
I actually meant “abortion after rape”.
Sorry, the hypotheticals of the whole issue tend to get me fired off, and I was tired to begin with. chuckles
Snoopy Fan, I had a post in mind which would match yours for cruelty or top it, but my moral sense kicked in. Instead, I’ll limit myself to this. Attitudes like yours are one of the main reasons I will never call myself “pro-life”, despite my belief that abortion is morally wrong. The arrogance and the cruelty are too much for me. Don’t impose your morality on me or encourage others to do so; I find their definition of morality to be, well, immoral.
CJ
I wasn’t exactly trying to make a full formal argument on the topic.
My own personal opinion is that there is no difference relevant to the fetus’ personhood between the moment before it passes through the birth canal and the moment after, nor a discernible threshold between the fetus about to pass through the canal and the fetus at any point after embedding in the uterine wall. I might conceive of a definition of personhood that excluded the fetus, if I were to require qualities such as rational thinking, moral agency, and so on. But I couldn’t tailor a definition along any rational lines that could make the distinction necessary to conclude personhood begins at birth, and therefore however I conclude the issue of whether an infant child has a right not to be killed by virtue of its personhood then this extends to the fetus as well.
As you can see, I am running over this all too quickly, and there are points you could make at different stages of the argument. For just one example, you might conclude that while neither the fetus nor the infant child are persons, the infant child nevertheless has certain rights by virtue of something other than personhood. At any rate, the point of my post in question was to attempt to give a brief overview of how a person who had equated human life with an entity posessing rights could arrive at the conclusion that the rape exception is not justified.
Cerri gives an emotional response to the conclusion that there should be no rape exception. Note first that such is not my conclusion, because I have a slightly different conception of rights (namely, I view all of an individuals’ rights as an extension of the same basic right and representative of the same thing, whereas many people introduce a hierarchy of rights wherein the right to life somehow trumps the life to property.)
First of all, I don’t believe that my gender is relevant to my conclusion. A conclusion exists independently of the one formulating it. Whether or not I may end up having a personal experience in which the conclusion is put into practice is not relevant to the conclusion’s truth or falsity. The personal experience is only important if it introduces new facts that would change the conclusion, that are relevant to the conclusion.
The emotional responses that you mention are not relevant to the ultimate conclusion. I need not have murdered a person or had a person close to me be murdered to argue and conclude that murder is wrongful, a violation of a person’s negative right to life. Your examples, were I to go through them, would certainly help me understand the experiential consequences of a particular incident of the event, and of adopting a rule about the event. But I am not a consequentialist, at least not within the sphere of actions that impede rights, and for the most part neither are abortion opponents. If we were pure consequentialists or utilitarians, we might simply declare abortion acceptable due to its tangible social benefits.
So the fact that a particular moral conclusion, if applied, would cause a certain amount of emotional pain is just not relevant to truth of the conclusion itself. Reality is objective, and the mere fact of your emotional pain, while everyone would certainly sympathize with you, does not alter reality.
As for Seige’s remark, I’m sorry to see that old canard spring up again about “imposing your morality on me”. If you see me about to kill my neighbor unprovoked, make a correct moral judgment that this is wrong, and act to stop me from doing this, are you “imposing your morality on me”. Not at all. If it is, then you better tell the gov’t to stop imposing their morality on all those thieves and murderers they arrest every day. If abortion were like marijuana use, something that does not infringe on any others’ rights, then to outlaw it would indeed be to “impose morality”, though I fail to see how anything could be immoral unless it trod upon anothers validly held right. In recognizing a real moral prohibition, you are not imposing it. The moral principle exists, you are merely inducing me to recognize it as well. I am subject to it whether or not I choose to see it or to ignore it. If you were about to walk off a cliff, stubbornly refusing to see the cliff right in front of you and protesting all along to me that there was no such cliff, am I “imposing” reality upon you by trying to make you see it? Do you gain anything from living a lie, from faking reality? Can you keep it up?
I strongly suspect that much of the support for abortion comes from those who would like to do just that, to fake reality so as to arrive at a conclusion which tells them that the action that will improve their life is also the morally correct action. I recognize the numerous and substantial social benefits of abortion. I recognize that many women’s lives have been made better by it, and probably alot of men as well (men who would otherwise have been financially obligated for 18+ years.) Alot of people see all that and decide to take positive consequences for one of the persons involved as conclusive of moral permissibility.
Uhhhh… Rex?
There’s kind of a big difference between you killing your neighbor and someone having an abortion… One’s killing a person, and the other isn’t.