So we have been seeing a lot of stories about abortion these days. From our governor proposing primitive and unconstitutional laws to protests from both sides of the aisle and rallies.
I guess my question is when is our local media going to pony up and just do a poll of South Dakota voters? Heck, they could even join forces and use the Poli-Sci departments at the public universities to help conduct it.
I think the results in South Dakota would be the same as the rest of the country. Most people support legal abortion as long as it is within a reasonable window of time.
I will tell you why the media won’t touch it, they like the controversy. Even though South Dakotans have voted twice to preserve prochoice in our state there seems to be this attitude in the media that we are split 50/50 on the topic. I don’t believe it for a moment.
The closest the local media will ever come to dealing with the issue of abortion is to report on how much hamburger had to be thrown out during the Burger Battle. Or, how a misspelled Fe(s)tus won it.
1. A pregnant woman is the patient.
2. Ectopic pregnancies kill women.
3. Rich women have full reproductive rights while women at the lower income margins suffer chilling effects on those rights. Women in Texas, Wyoming and South Dakota who can afford it simply jump on a plane and fly to Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Denver or elsewhere for their procedures. Imagine a woman on the Standing Rock or Pine Ridge doing that.
4. South Dakota’s repeated attempts to restrict access to medical care are not only mean-spirited, they’re discriminatory anti-choice extremism.
5. “Pro-life” is simply code for white people breeding. African-Americans terminate pregnancies at about the same per capita rate as white people do but don’t take their jobs. Latinas, however, have fewer abortions per capita but the extreme white wing laments it’s hemorrhaging jobs to Latinos.
6. No foetus in the United States has any civil rights until the third trimester. Republicans preach civil rights for human zygotes but deny the protections of the First, Fourth and Ninth Amendments to people who enjoy cannabis.
7. Ending reproductive rights in red states is Balkanizing women’s medical care.
8. An acorn is not an oak tree so a foetus is no more an unborn child than it is an unborn grandparent.
Roe v Wade has worked since 1973 (nearly 50 years). If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.