One Last Stab at South Dakota

Here is another excellent editorial by Sam Hurst on the abortion issue in South Dakota. It will be the last one I publish on this subject. I promise.

For the second time in as many years, Mike Rounds has proven himself to be a good Catholic and a bad governor. It's a shame. On a variety of issues regarding education and economic development the governor has shown himself to be quite creative and forward thinking. But when it comes to a good old-fashioned religious crusade, he has a whopping big blind spot.
Last year Gov. Rounds received a letter from the Catholic bishop of Sioux Falls demanding that the State Library Web site remove a link to Planned Parenthood. Keep the link to a Catholic Web site, but dump Planned Parenthood.
The governor did his duty to the bishop, with no apparent pause to consider obscure little problems like, say, the Constitution. To their credit, the State Library Board voted twice to affirm the link to Planned Parenthood. His response was to shut down the entire Web site.
Now the governor has signed the most vicious anti-women's health legislation in the nation. As a general rule, I am opposed to the use of the veto by governors who simply disagree with the intent of duly elected legislators. But events of the last week have led me to wonder if Gov. Rounds, once again, has gotten wrapped up in the hysteria of a religious crusade, while neglecting to ask simple questions about just how the law will work. After all, when the chorus of righteous prayer has fallen to a whisper, the women and men, parents and priests, physicians and insurance companies of South Dakota will have to figure out how to live with the new law.
The governor's lack of curiosity about the mechanics of the law is a failure of leadership, and a reflection of his blind spot for religious and medical values that differ from his own.
Consider the theory of embryonic development articulated in the law. It is based on a narrow interpretation of Christian values, but it has nothing to do with science, or medicine, or the values of the larger society. Gov. Rounds seems to believe that since the law reflects his values, there are no others. That's his blind spot.
The law prohibits a woman from getting an abortion to protect her health. But it allows an abortion to protect her life. Think about that. It is a remarkably idiotic piece of legislative craftsmanship. Where is the line between "health" and "life"? Who will make the decision? The law is mute on these problems. That's the way it is with religious crusades - big on symbolism, lousy when it comes to the lives of real people.
Can we agree that a woman and her physician should make the decision about the invisible, fleeting line between health and life? No! The whole point of the new law is to take these judgments away from the woman and her physician and put them in the hands of ... whom? Lawyers? Christian elders? A church tribunal? Ah ... an Inquisition.
I asked a local obstetrician: If a woman has been raped and impregnated and is in poor health, he cannot, under the new law, recommend an abortion in the first trimester, when it could be done safely. Instead, he told me, he must wait until death is imminent, when the risk to both the woman and the fetus is at its highest.
Even if the wording of the law is hopeless, Gov. Rounds might reasonably have looked at "legislative intent." Sen. Bill Napoli was eager to weigh in during an interview on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer." He was asked to describe a situation in which an abortion would be allowed to protect the life of a pregnant woman.
My thoughts turned to problems like chronic heart disease or complications from diabetes. But Sen. Napoli, having given the matter serious consideration for several months, went in another direction entirely. "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."
Despite the fact that the law does not make an exception for rape or incest, Sen. Napoli has carved out his own "virgin Christian sodomy" exception.
I can imagine the hospital operating room now - an obstetrician, a pediatrician, a surgeon, a few nurses, the hospital lawyer, a priest, in deference to Sen. Napoli, a psychologist. And oh, lest we forget ... the woman.
"Shall we abort?"
"Well, doctor, she was brutally raped and sodomized, but do we know whether she was a Christian?"
"Was she a virgin? Was she saving herself?"
Of course, Sen. Napoli's comments are bigoted and absurd, but they speak to the intent of many legislators to hoist the banner of a religious crusade rather than actually making law to reduce the need for abortions in South Dakota.
At the very moment when we needed Mike Rounds to look at the law rather than the cause, he could not see beyond his blind spot.The problem with blind spots is that you don't know you've got one until you're in a wreck, and you never know when a wreck might happen ... like next November, or 2008.