Meanwhile, South Dakota's Orwellian "Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act" was signed into law. Following in the footsteps of a slanted and dubious panel, they only will now allow abortions to be performed by doctors (or medicines that do the job) if the woman's life is at stake or the pregnancy itself cannot be determined.
Thus, yes, even if the women's health was significantly at risk (even at a few percentage points, this would affect thousands of women), no abortion. Well, okay, if it was self-induced. This rule of not applying restrictive laws to women themselves is traditional and arguably legitimate to the degree it is hard to target women alone without having proof problems and probably Fourth Amendment issues. It does look bad, doesn't it?
The law also alters the state constitution's due process clause to allow this move. Of course, this leaves the federal Constitution, which even Chief Justice Roberts might think does not allow disallowing abortions to protect a woman's health. Thus, this seems a step too far. If these people were serious, they would have used some old law that had an exception for the woman's health (more limited than the current acception), or (you know, if they wanted to be really crazy) in cases of rape/incest, or severe fetal deformity. Well, yeah, that would be not even worth mentioning since it would only bar something like 90% or so of abortions. Who knew South Dakota, who used to have two Democratic senators not too long ago, was this backward?
The law refers to these findings:
based upon written materials, scientific studies, and testimony of witnesses presented to the task force, that life begins at the time of conception, a conclusion confirmed by scientific advances since the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, including the fact that each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization. Moreover, the Legislature finds, based upon the conclusions of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, and in recognition of the technological advances and medical experience and body of knowledge about abortions produced and made available since the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, that to fully protect the rights, interests, and health of the pregnant mother, the rights, interest, and life of her unborn child, and the mother's fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child, abortions in South Dakota should be prohibited
The fact that some sort of "life" begins at conception was known when Roe v. Wade was handed down. The rub was what one would do with this fact, namely, if the rights of personhood was also supplied along with all that suggests. Also, I am not aware that "each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization" is really news either. Actually, in many cases, this "human being" is naturally disposed of by the human body by miscarriage. Or, is split into two or more "unique" multiple pregnancies. The word "unique" does imply "unique individual," which is simply not in place this early.
Some have referred to in vitro fertilization, but besides the fact that this was probably known about in theory in 1973, what does this change? All that did was apply the already used artificial conception method (in animal husbandry) to humans, changing the locale of fertilization. The bottom line in Roe was that a woman had a right to privacy and there was no way simply to remove theembryoo ... the fetus not being able to survive until viability, which has changed by a few weeks since '73.
Some studies have suggested ... while others did not ... that pain and so forth might be felt by the unborn earlier than we thought. But, at two weeks? Also, an absolute ban would not be necessarily required, especially given we do not force good samaritanship in other contexts. And, some sort of use of pain relievers to I guess knock out the embryo before performing the abortion. Surely, this is possible, if the alternative is no abortion.
The "health" part is particularly outrageous, since there is no health exception in the law. Some point tocertainn emotional problems some women have after an abortion (the breast cancer tie has been shown to be dubious). This proves too much, since the same applies for forced childbirth. The compelling need to secure a woman's "natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child" also does not seem to require forcing them to bring said "child" to term, even if said "relationship" would cause her health and other problems, or be severely problematic if it happened at a particular point in time.
Again, the best way to protect the alleged state interests would be a reasonable family planning regime plus an improved social welfare system. This is a lot easier, I guess. OTOH, some more realistic pro-life sorts also aren't so glad about this law.
Meanwhile, more Saletan bashing. Always fun.