From the statement of South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds upon signing his state's abortion ban:
In the history of the world, the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society. The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society. I agree with them. This week, the Rev. C. Joshua Villines disagreed with Rounds' dismissal of the value of a woman's life in a column published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lacking basis, Christians fight abortion She may bear even greater consequences than most people have thought about. Certainly there is nothing but celebration on the minds of the Godly gang at the American Life League, who on March 20 published a full-page ad in the Pierre Capital Journal to congratulate the state of South Dakota.
SOUTH DAKOTA ROCKS! As might have been expected, the passage of the draconian abortion ban in South Dakota is fueling similar efforts in other states. There is even concern that Ohio House Bill 228, pending since 2005, may now have a chance of passage. This bill takes the inevitable next step, stripping away the mask of concern for women perpetuated by South Dakota in titling its ban the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act. HB 228 not only would make it a felony for a woman to have an abortion, but would criminalize her and anyone who assisted her if she crossed the state line to seek an abortion elsewhere. The only exception to the proposed Ohio ban is an abortion performed to save a woman's life, but the bill's primary sponsor, Rep. Tom Brinkman, explains that the exception to save a woman's life is just for show anyway.
Besides, if a woman or girl is raped and subsequently has an abortion, the rapist wins.
Paula Westwood, executive director of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati, [argues] that men win and women lose when a child of rape is aborted. Positively Pythonesque, isn't it? However, should you think that slapping felony charges on a woman, her family or her friends for "facilitating an abortion" outside the state is an extreme provision that would be struck by the first court to consider it, consider what is happening in Missouri. Last fall, Missouri passed a law against assisting a minor who crossed the state line to seek an abortion. When the law was challenged, Circuit Judge Charles Atwell issued a temporary injunction against its enforcement pending a ruling by a higher court. Atwell ruled that while the law lacked protections for free speech by persons who had no intent to assist a minor in obtaining an abortion, the statute in itself was constitutional.
Atwell said the law is unconstitutional, as it infringes on the right to free speech and due process for people who provide information and counseling to girls, and said providing information on reproductive rights would be protected. However, he said the law would be constitutional if it were interpreted with his judicial restraints. Atwell said that a lawsuit only could be brought against someone if they were familiar with the law and if they knew the girl being counseled was under 18 and also was trying to circumvent the consent requirement. "[T]he court, with substantial trepidation, finds that (the law) is constitutional" with those restrictions in place, Atwell wrote. How one feels about parental involvement laws is irrelevant here; what matters is the legal principle being upheld. The state of Missouri has the right to control its citizens' access to abortion in any other state, regardless of that other state's own laws. So much for the argument that if Roe is overturned and abortion is criminalized in some states, women still will be free to travel to less restrictive states for abortion care. The South Dakota ban specifies penalties only against physicians or other persons who actually might perform an abortion. However, as Lynn Paltrow and Charon Asetoyer explain in South Dakota's New Murderers, that does nothing to protect women from prosecution. If abortion becomes illegal, women are subject to prosecution under other statutes already in existence.
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. Even the most ardent anti-choice activists are reluctant to talk about what will happen to women who have abortions when abortion is once again a crime. Amazingly enough, it seems that most of them haven't even thought about it [video link]. But we know what happened to women the last time around.
The earlier laws never stopped abortion, but they did make it more dangerous. As police and prosecutors stepped up their enforcement in the 1940s and 1950s, they pushed good, safe abortion providers out of practice. As a result, abortion got more deadly. Many women who went to illegal abortionists were blindfolded and had abortions in secret places. Many survived, but some died and many more were seriously injured. Of course it did. Doctors still practicing today tell us that it happened all the time. And the worshipers of a more heartless God than mine can hardly wait for it to happen all over again. Because for them, a fantastical idolatry of the "unborn" overshadows the value of any woman on earth. [Title image from Women Doing Time]
What Do You Call a Woman Who Has an Abortion? | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)
What Do You Call a Woman Who Has an Abortion? | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)
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Left Behind: Eternal Forces: Installments of Jonathan Hutson's Talk To Action expose series
on the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game have been viewed by up to 1/2 million people. See our site section featuring Over 35 original articles covering the controversial "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game that has provoked a boycott by a coalition of religious groups and a letter writing campaign urging Walmart to stop selling the game. Media inquiries click here(image: detail from Francoise Dubois' rendition of the Bartholomew's Day Massacre reveals the actual nature of religious warfare)
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