Welcome To ScAlito World: Abortion --Georgia10--Daily Kos

[Demeter]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/27/1113/1555

Tue Dec 27, 2005 at 09:01:03 AM PDT
In January, we will witness the confirmation hearings of Alito for Supreme Court Justice. There will be a lot of discussion about domestic surveillance, the environment, and, of course, abortion. He'll duck and dodge when confronted with his own words about overturning Roe, he'll pretend like he never really meant it when he said the landmark precedent should be dismantled. For those who think he shouldn't be filibustered over the issue of abortion alone, I present to you the following picture.

The Washington Post ran a piece yesterday about abortion in South Dakota. First, let me emphasize that Roe established a right to an abortion before viability and that state restrictions on that right could not be "unduly burdensome." In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court reiterated that the right recognized by Roe is "a right to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." Alito, we know, endorses a stealth approach to overturning Roe. He would cleverly undermine the precedent by upholding restriction after restriction until nothing is left of Roe, until the "right" to abortion in the first trimester is meaningless since women won't be able to properly exercise that right.

Now, let's turn to South Dakota. In Alito's world, these restrictions on a woman's right are perfectly legal:


There is only one abortion clinic in the state. It operates only once a week. Sometimes Monday, sometimes Wednesday, depending on when an abortion doctor flies in to the state.

An anti-choice task force is successfully lobbying for a law "requiring that a woman watch an ultrasound of her fetus, that doctors warn women about the psychological and physical dangers of abortion, and that women receive psychological counseling before the abortion, among other measures."

The procedure costs $450. The state refuses to pay any of it, even in cases of rape or incest.. By the way, South Dakota is home to the poorest counties in the nation.

Some women in the state have to travel 700 miles in one day to get the procedure done.

It's not just abortions. The laws also apply to the RU-486 pill.

A law, currently blocked by Planned Parenthood, requires the doctor tell the woman prior to the procedure that "abortion ends the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being."



And what if Alito is confirmed and he does indeed overturn Roe? Anti-choice activists will spin it as an issue of state's rights. But in the aftermath of such an action, will states engage in a real dialogue about a woman's right to choose? No. If Alito has his way, several states, including South Dakota, have "trigger laws" which make abortion illegal the minute Roe is overturned. It's not just the red states that have trigger laws. Illinois, one of the bluest in the nation, has such a trigger law automatically outlawing abortion when Roe is overturned.

In ScAlito's world, every state would be South Dakota. In his world, the right to choose is so heavily burdened, that it really is no right at all.