Not to be outdone, South Dakota has passed a bill banning all abortions except those involving rape, incest, or health of the mother. This is the second time the legislature has voted on such a ban. The first was defeated by a 12% margin. But before you start having warm, fuzy thoughts about South Dakota, take a look at the regulations governing the abortion process...
Rape victims can receive an abortion only if they report the rapes to police within 50 days. Doctors then have to confirm the victim's report with police, take blood from aborted fetuses, and give that information to police for DNA testing.
In the case of incest, a doctor has to get the woman’s (in most cases the girl's) consent to report the crime along with the identity of the alleged perpetrator (i.e. father, brother, uncle) before an abortion could be performed. Blood samples from fetuses are also required.
And to top it off, at the end of the year, the photos of all those who had an abortion are published in the newspaper so the women can be properly stoned in accordance with Bible teachings.
On the surface, some of this may seem reasonable. The legislators want to prevent those oh-so-common drive-through abortions, and so they created a legal procedure (hoop if you will) that women have to go (jump) through. However, the law seems to totally ignore the fact that rape is an extremely difficult thing to deal with, particularly in the case of incest. Despite being raped by their father, for instance, some girls cannot bring themselves to report their father to authorities. There exists an intense conflict between the injustice of what their loved one did and criminalizing that person, whether it be a father, brother, uncle.
BUT WAIT! It gets better. In the face of an overburdened penal system, the South Dakota legislators thought it would be great to make the sentence for doctors performing "illegal" abortions 10 years, up from the 5 years stated in the previous bill. Brilliant! Sometimes you just have to marvel at the idiocy of it all.
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In other words, it sounds as though South Dakota legislators took what the voters soundly rejected and they made it less offensive in a few areas and more offensive in others. Elected officials are slow to learn.
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