According to a South Dakota state senator.

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

Because a sexually experienced atheist just could not be as traumatized by rape. They are not as pure and therefore, should carry the fetus to term.

Freedoms lost in "the land of the free".
Janine

you forgot "have"

You are correct. With the old board, one could correct mistakes one made with the title. Just pretend that I did make the change.
Cheers,
Janine

Warning to all the women in South Dakota. Keep your legs closed tight. And start packing a .38 in your purse.

Here's the link to donate to Planned Parenthood.

I could only afford a small donation, but it's something that everyone who cares about this should do.

I'll gladly perform free abortions to help out the cause.

In fact, I'm sharpening my shipment of coat hangers as we speak.

i make my donations by paying for them.

Could I add: "never been free and never will be, but let's keep the illusion going for the sake of argument"

Losing freedoms, though, I agree is not very good.

Funny thing is:

How come these yahoos are so convinced that Alito and Roberts are going to stop Roe Vs. Wade? They seem patently convinced of this as if it's a slam dunk. From what I saw in the precedings, I am not convinced either way.

True, but this is the first chance the Conservatives have had since what? Earl Warren was named Chief Justice???

SCOTUS Tries To Get a Little Bit Pregnant

Why the broader abortion ban is the one that's constitutional

~Jacob Sullum

jsullum@reason.com



If John Paul Stevens, who turns 86 next month, stays on the Supreme Court a few more years, the fate of South Dakota's new abortion ban is not hard to predict. Stevens and the four other remaining justices who voted to reaffirm a constitutional right to abortion in 1992 presumably will vote the same way if and when they consider the law.

By contrast, there's a good chance the federal ban on "partial birth" abortion, which the Court recently agreed to review, will be upheld. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who provided the swing vote in the 1999 decision overturning a similar Nebraska law, was replaced this year by Samuel Alito, who seems to have a narrower view of what constitutes an "undue burden" on abortion rights.

Those probable outcomes are exactly the opposite of what the Constitution requires. Under the federal system envisioned by the Framers, regulating abortion is the business of the states, which means the South Dakota law, no matter how extreme it seems to many Americans (including me), should be upheld, while the federal law, no matter how trivial its impact, should be overturned.

South Dakota's ban, which Gov. Mike Rounds has indicated he will sign, makes every abortion except those deemed necessary to save the mother's life a felony punishable by up to five years in prison . It defines every embryo, from the moment of conception onward, as an "unborn human being."

The government obviously needs to draw a line after which it is no longer OK to do away with one's offspring. My own view (apparently shared by most Americans, which does not necessarily mean it's correct) is that conception is too early and birth is too late.

But South Dakota's legislators made a different call, and under the Constitution it is their call to make. The Supreme Court has never found a plausible textual basis for abortion rights, and it is folly to pretend the Constitution dictates legislative specifics such as the correct dividing line between legal and illegal abortions, appropriate exceptions, and reasonable conditions.

In contrast with the sweeping South Dakota ban, the federal ban covers only a tiny percentage of abortions, those involving the method known as intact dilation and extraction (D&X). The law is unlikely to prevent even a single abortion, since (as its supporters emphasize) other methods can be used instead.

The law declares "partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother." Yet it implicitly concedes the procedure is sometimes necessary to preserve the life of the mother by including an exception for such situations. Go figure.

Even more illogical is the decision to focus not on the timing of abortions, which would seem to be the relevant consideration in determining the legal status of a fetus, but on the procedure used. A D&X abortion—which involves pulling the fetus partially out of the womb, jabbing scissors into the base of the skull, and sucking out the brain so the head can be collapsed—certainly is gruesome, but it is morally indistinguishable from, say, an abortion in which the fetus is chopped up within the uterus and removed piece by piece.

The U.S. Supreme Court has no mandate to tell states they may not draw this arbitrary distinction. But it does have a mandate to stop Congress from exceeding its enumerated powers, which it plainly has done in this case.

If it's hard to locate a right to abortion in the Constitution, it is no less difficult to find congressional authority to regulate abortion. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act seeks to do so under the laughable pretext that every abortion is part of interstate commerce.

Abortion rights supporters may have invited this sort of legislation by federalizing the abortion issue and pushing a limitless reading of the power to regulate interstate commerce. But it's conservatives who have responded by sacrificing their own principles.

=====================================

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and the author of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use. Sullum's weekly column is distributed by Creators Syndicate. If you'd like to see it in your local newspaper, please e-mail or call the editorial page editor today.


http://www.reason.com/sullum/030106.shtml

Where does his quote end and your commentary begin?

Uh... I don't think that's possible.

You beat me to it. Not only are these legislators complete fucking failures at life, they can't even comprehend basic anatomy and biology.

um, there are women in S. Dakota?

Someone has the great idea of making Napoli into a verb. Find out more here. It worked for Santorum!
Cheers,
Janine

They know Roe v Wade will not get over turned with the current court. Even if Alito & Roberts are for overturning Roe v Wade it's still 5-4 for Roe
They want their case to fail in the courts so they can use it as in issue in upcomming elections. You know how the right hates those activist judges

There is a theory that the GOP hierarchy would be happy if roe v wade never got over turned. If it gets over turned they forever lose using it as an issue

If it ever was overturned, couldn't they just continue to use it, only presenting it as a law that Democrats want to overturn once more? You know, "Keep abotion illegal." "Keep us in office or those Godless LIBS and DEMS will go back to killing babies!" etc.

And by the same token, every woman who dies from an illegal abortion will trigger a rallying cry from the forces of Good. On the other hand, the "underground railroad" that would develop between pro-choice and anti-choice states would bolster the travel industry.

If it's overturned, the laws will vary from state to state.

There will be states with laws at both extremes of the issue.

South Dakota's law alone is beginning to turn the tide. Conservatives on the matter seem like the reactionary lunatics while the libs have the opportunity to appeal to the middle ground as just wanting to protect women. I too am convinced that this is more about rallying middle America and the South to the GOP through social policies as opposed to economic and legislative policy, which is actually counter to what most middle class folk support.