The truth S.D. lawmakers won't tell on abortion law

[BR_Parkway]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/3705186.html

Undoubtedly, the law's supporters will point to language that specifically states that "nothing in this Act may be construed to subject the pregnant mother upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction and penalty." The truth is, though, that this particular act need not authorize arrests of pregnant women for such arrest to start taking place.

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.

<snip>

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.

[Maraya1969]

1. What does the new law say about the prosecution or not of the doctor?

[Devlzown]

2. Sounds perfectly logical to me.

If they're going to say a fetus is a person, then having an abortion must be, at the very least, conspiracy to commit murder. It would be like hiring a hit on your husband. People need to see the consequences that will be meted out to those who break these laws.

[undergroundpanther]

3. Could any feminist surgeon

Step up to offer women low cost or free tubal ligations or hysterectomies? Because if women are forced to give birth to a rapists child,or a child of incest women need to think about the risk of fertility.Folks rape happens (1 in 3 women) Statistically rape is frighteningly common problem . I wonder it is better to not be fertile? Than to risk forced birth? Over and over(if rape happens again)Being an unwanted child psychologically harms a person all their life.Better a fetus not be conceived than be born as a burden and unwanted to a mother that cannot handle it.

[Skeptor]

6. Consequences like arbitrary detention

exercised by one of the "faith-based groups" in the DHS, perhaps, on grounds of "prevention of a Christian holocaust"?

Mind you, there is a case for placing pregnant women (who intend to proceed with the pregnancy) with substance abuse problems under close care arrangements. But jail? Don't they do drugs there? Duh...

Then again, plenty of pregnant women are too poor to provide themselves and the 'life within' with adequate nutrition, and who's to blame there? If the State really cared as much for the lives of the yet-to-be-born, it would abolish poverty. Instead, the theocrat-politicians blame the individual, every time. Someone needs to sue the pontificating bastards for criminal neglect.

(PSSST It's not really "lives" they're talking about; that's just PR bullshit. They mean "souls". But since they can't get a soul to show up on an MRI scan, they hit on the nearest thing that can at least get an airing in a secular arena. I don't doubt that they hope one day not to have to undergo such contortions.)

[fasttense]

4. Good luck with that.

Everyone knows these abortion laws are next to useless. No one enforced the laws before RvW, and they aren't going to enforce them now. It is just grandstanding to show how much they support their crazy Christian base. Only poor women will have to turn to backstreet abortionists and criminals in SD are all set to reap the rewards of this law.

[Judi Lynn]

5. South Dakota Congressman Bill Janklow killed a motorcyclist speeding

after years of speeding and getting by with it as South Dakota's governor, and he picked up a sentence of 100 days.
Quaint state, South Dakota.

Nothing would give rightwingers greater pleasure than to know women who sought abortion were tossed deep into the bowels of a prison. Ideally, they want everyone different from them dead or simply gone somewhere.

If they could achieve that state of bliss, they would have to start turning against the ones who they suspected might be less "holy" among themselves. This could be someone who didn't support the every-man-for-himself economic system they favor.

[zalinda]

7. This also means that those woman who suffer

a spontaneous abortion (which is the medical term for a miscarriage) could also be prosecuted. They could decide that whatever she was doing or not doing in her pregnancy caused the abortion. Of course, only rich woman would not be held to that standard.

zalinda

[xchrom]

8. the anti-christians like these sd legislators mean to drive the country

into a state of permanent division.

i don't see how we will survive as a united country.

who wants to live with these people and fight these stupid battles perpetually?

[lapfog_1]

9. Not me...

The red state idiots already hate everyone in California (the freeper parts of my family are convinced that I'm gay simply because I'm in my 40's, not married, and live "in San Francisco" (I live in Silicon Valley, which is 40 miles from SF). I'm not gay, but then it's none of their damn business if I was! I say F'em. Everyone move to the left coast or the northeast, we bodily remove the freepers from our states, and we start a new "states rights" movement, and it that fails... well the Pacific States of America kinda has a nice ring to it.

[xchrom]

10. i have to remind myself that ''we'' might win in 06 & 08

but that doesn't mean in the least that we have put this dragon to bed.

we will revisit this time and again.

[Cassandra]

11. "a whole, separate, unique living human being."

is a baby, not a fetus. It's that "separate" part that's the sticking point.