While I’m quite unhappy with South Dakota’s new law outlawing pretty much all abortions except to save the life of the mother, I do have to respect that they’ve not included (if they’re going to outlaw abortion) exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
If the driving goal of banning abortion is that a fetus is a human life that deserves the full protection of the law, allowing exceptions for particularly unpleasant circumstances related to conception makes no moral sense. If a fetus is to be treated as human as a gurgling baby, then if we don’t allow infanticide in case of rape, allowing abortion in such a case makes no logical sense.
Of course, such exceptions make proposed abortion laws more palatable — but they’re morally inconsistent, and if you’re going to pass a law on moral grounds, you should at least be consistent. Again, I respect that they didn’t take such an easy, political, but dubious.
That said — I disagree with such a law, and hope that it is successfully challenged in the inevitable court battles to come.
SoDak…or as it will now be refered to as…Gilead.
My problem when any law gets passed on ‘moral’ grounds is the assumption that everyone has the same standards of morality that the lawmakers have.
I find this law reprehensible as it is legislating / dictating what someone is able to do to thier own body, thus restricting a womans freedom and free will. *shrugs* In effect all it really is doing is forcing women in SD to either cross state lines to seek an abortion, coerce a doctor to perform one and break the law, or seek out a risky ‘back room’ sort of abortion of the type that used to be common before ‘Roe v Wade’.
It doesn’t do a thing to handle the underlying problem of the mother having an unwanted pregnancy in the first place, such as increasing sexual education funding or access to contraceptives.
As far as I can tell if this does get signed, with their only being one abortion clinic in SD, the largest effect of this bill is going to be a lengthy legal battle paid out of the state treasury as an attack on ‘Roe v Wade’.
That assumption may or may be what’s going on in this case (if it were, then the proposal to make this a referendum would have made more sense). Sometimes morality bills are passed out of a sense of moral imperative.
*If* you consider abortion to be the same as infanticide, then doing whatever you can to stop it would seem to be a moral imperative, and issues of tolerance or letting other make a personal decision or even “control over someone’s own body” takes a back seat to that.
It doesn’t do a thing to handle the underlying problem of the mother having an unwanted pregnancy in the first place, such as increasing sexual education funding or access to contraceptives.
Such things are generally consider by anti-abortion folks to be part and parcel of the same immorality, as they “encourage” sex outside of marriage. The argument would be that by preventing the “easy” out of an abortion, it will discourage the activities that would lead to such a situation.
Not that I agree, but part of the problem is that many of the premises involved are different that the “obvious” conclusions for one side are rarely obvious for the other.
Why the exemption for the mother’s life? Since when is it OK to kill one innocent in order to save another innocent?
Let the women of South Dakota vote with their feet.
Traditionally, the mother’s life has usually been protected as the default position, though I suppose the mother could override that request.
Let the women of South Dakota vote with their feet.
Very Lysistratan.
Hey, does that make it a feet-all protest?
I voted with my feet when it came to South Dakota years ago, and I’ve been happy with my decision…nothing to do with abortion, per se, but there you go.
My main objection to anti-abortionism is that it isn’t “pro-life.” If anti-abortionism weren’t a political move (rather than an ethical one) as a whole, we’d see a national movement for free prenatal, birthing, and health care, with extensive welfare, addiction recovery, and educational reforms that prevent the negative effects of not having an abortion. End abortion, you’re *going* to have another rise in crime like we saw in the eighties, unless we do something to prevent it. You’re going to see more women in abusive, dysfunctional marriages, because they can’t afford to raise their children alone. There *will* be more child abuse. There *will* be more children living in poverty, wihtout healthcare insurance, dropping out of school, etc. You’d see churches preaching the virtues of adoption, of morally supporting unwed mothers who give their children up for adoption instead of condemning them for having sex in the first place. You’d see more votes for sex education and fewer votes for Britney Spears-type chastity before marriage programs–look how well that one turned out, because she’s a wholesome figure and a great parent, obviously.
Abortion is a bad solution. But to say “let’s cure the solution” without curing the problems that drive people to it is just ripping off the tourniquet and letting people bleed to death.
Hey, does that make it a feet-all protest?
Bravo.
As to your other observations — I agree with them, but (assuming as the devil’s advocate an honest pro-life position), most of those objections would be answered with a “well, back when we were a Godly country” sort of answers: if there are strong social (and even legal) stigmas against non-marital sex, then it won’t happen, and thus the problem largely goes away. Ditto the issue of single parenthood. If communities band together — centered on a strong church life, for example — then there will be social support for those few cases of unwanted pregnancies that do occur. Creating a bigger safety net, these folks would say, for unwanted pregnancy and lustful desires only encourages people to jump into said net.
It is not a set of arguments that can be logically argued against, since it (and, to some degree, the pro-choice arguments) derive from strongly held values and beliefs and emotions, which are not amenable to argument (or, easily, to self-examination).