The South Dakota legislature passed a comprehensive piece of legislation yesterday which, if signed by the governor, would prohibit abortions in all circumstances excluding those performed to save the mother’s life.
Consensus among the punditry fashions the legislation as the next major challenge to Roe. Though I don’t believe anyone can speak to that quite yet, this bill will inevitably spark a challenge in federal court and, probably, a reversal. District and circuit courts are bound by Supreme Court decisions and precedent, which have decidedly frowned upon any statutory restrictions on abortion. If such narrowly constructed restrictions, such as those on partial-birth abortion, are antithetical to the constitution than surely so to is this bill.
Substantively, I would personally oppose the bill’s passage into law. I am generally pro-life and would support a general ban on abortion here in Washington State—provided that bill contained exceptions for victims of rape and incest, provisions absent from South Dakota’s version. I simply do not believe you can force a woman, victimized by either act, to carry a pregnancy to term in which they had no choice in creating.
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