What: Initiated Measure 11, “An Initiative to prohibit abortions except in cases where the mother’s life or health is at a substantial and irreversible risk, and in cases of reported rape and incest.”
Where: South Dakota
When: This election year
Yes, the infamous “Abortion Ban” has returned to South Dakota this election season. This time around, however, it has considerably less press and many more bells in whistles, it’s fancy, new misleading title included. In 2006, the South Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill that banned all abortions in the State giving many anti-choice supporters a few months of false hopes that the entire State would do the same thing. They were so excited, in fact, that the ran overt national publicity campaigns drawing unecessary attention to South Dakota, a State that by no means has the budget to go through the long appeals process of challenging the Supreme Court. What they forgot to consider is that women do get raped, even in South Dakota, and that there is such a thing as incest. (Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, sweetheart.) Consequently, those who opposed the ban, myself included, could easily fill up petitions with signatures to put the ban on the ballot in November and to be voted down by the public.
2008 has proved to be much different. The national campaign by anti-choice supporters has been much more covert, with protests and rallies held in D.C. instead of South Dakota. There has been a distinct dearth of editorials in the local papers and even fewer press releases by all sides involved. Why the change? I think it’s because everyone’s confused.
The previous version of the ban was entirely black and white, something that so very rarely occurs in law, making it very easy for voters to make a decision and allow for a little hedging. This new one, not so much. Plus, it’s filled with every legal loophole and word trick in the book. The title paints the new ban as just as black and white and would seem to permit former “hedgers” to switch to the anti-choice side. The text of the bill, which of course only about 7 people will read, proves that absolutely nothing about the bill, in the grand scheme of things, has changed. Those exceptions for rape and incest? They require consent AND a police report. I’m sorry, but if you’re father/uncle/brother/whatever rapes you, are you seriously going to tell the police?
The Wall Street Journal printed a thorough article today that lays out the facts of the new ban and the complications ahead. I point this out tonight because the vast majority of people who devoted so much time and energy to defeating the previous ban don’t even know it’s back on the ballot. That’s the downfall of such a stellar presidential race: local issues are falling by the wayside. I don’t think people are grasping the magnitude of what happens if this ban passes in the state: the legal fees, the changes in the Supreme Court depending on who is president, the devaluation of privacy more than it already has been under the Bush Administration. In the past, I’ve called South Dakota “The Little State that Could.” I don’t think any of us want it to be The Little State that Could Ruin Everything. So please, even if all you did was put an “I Support South Dakota Women” poster in your dorm room in 2006, put it back up. Women may have lost their opportunity at the presidency this year but that does not mean they have lost their rights.
