from Talk to Action

Your wife, your mother, your sister, your daughter . . . or somebody else's criminal? A woman you love, or what Covenant News calls just another murderous mom?

Thoreau said, "The soul of man exists in the Contemplation of the nature of women behind bars." In this, as in so many other things, he appears to have been right.

From the statement of South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds upon signing his state's abortion ban:

In the history of the world, the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society. The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society. I agree with them.

This week, the Rev. C. Joshua Villines disagreed with Rounds' dismissal of the value of a woman's life in a column published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Lacking basis, Christians fight abortion

After spending time in women's health clinics, I have come to realize that the "most vulnerable and helpless" who need our active protection are the women and couples who are faced with the agonizingly difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy. As a Christian pastor, I strongly support protecting the right of women to make this decision. Other Christian pastors have chosen otherwise, and our division on this issue is proof that there is no Christian consensus here.

The far right, however, has been able to set the issue of abortion apart from all of the other controversial, life-or-death decisions we make every day. Abortion is not a special case; and I pray that the guardians of our Constitution will continue to protect our freedom to choose our own priorities in all of these weighty matters.

The beliefs or prejudices of some, regardless of who has a majority, should not be used to take the choice out of the hands of the woman who will be the main bearer, perhaps the only bearer, of the consequences of her decision.

She may bear even greater consequences than most people have thought about. Certainly there is nothing but celebration on the minds of the Godly gang at the American Life League, who on March 20 published a full-page ad in the Pierre Capital Journal to congratulate the state of South Dakota.

SOUTH DAKOTA ROCKS!

Thank you, South Dakota.

On March 6, you and your elected officials made history as the first state to create a law that bans all surgical abortions without exception.

American Life League offers our heartfelt gratitude to the people of South Dakota for electing the 73 lawmakers who passed HR1215 and Governor Mike Rounds who signed the bill into law.

Thank you South Dakota for putting a smile on the face of pro-life America.

As might have been expected, the passage of the draconian abortion ban in South Dakota is fueling similar efforts in other states. There is even concern that Ohio House Bill 228, pending since 2005, may now have a chance of passage. This bill takes the inevitable next step, stripping away the mask of concern for women perpetuated by South Dakota in titling its ban the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act. HB 228 not only would make it a felony for a woman to have an abortion, but equally would criminalize her and anyone who assisted her if she crossed the state line to seek an abortion elsewhere.

The only exception to the proposed Ohio ban is an abortion performed to save a woman's life, but the bill's primary sponsor, Rep. Tom Brinkman, explains that the exception to save a woman's life is just for show anyway.

"If we all passed the same (bill), then when they knocked out one of us they'd knock us all out," he says. "So it's our opportunity to put different ones across the plate, hoping that one will be the magic bullet."
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Brinkman's bill also prohibits transporting a woman across county or state lines for an abortion. Doing so would carry the same charge as an in-state abortion: first- or second-degree felonies punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Only when it's medically necessary to save a woman's life would Brinkman's bill allow abortion. But that never happens anyway, he says.

"It's a fallacy perpetrated by the Planned Parenthood people," Brinkman says. "My doctors tell me they're never in that type of dilemma."

"Isn't that nice, coming from a non-medical person?" says Debi Jackson. "Like he would know."

Jackson heads Cincinnati Women's Services, which takes what she calls a "holistic approach" to abortion. About two-thirds of the 1,200 pregnant women who come to her every year were using some form of birth control, she says.

She thinks the tenor of current legislative dealings bode ill for women's rights.

"It's not possible for something to be living inside you and have equal rights," she says. "It's becoming quite clear that a woman is just a vessel until the child is born."
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So what would Brinkman say to a young girl pregnant by her uncle?

"I would just tell that 13 year old -- I know they're (going) through a traumatic situation -- number one, it's not the baby's fault," he says. "Number two, we should have adoption choices available."

Besides, if a woman or girl is raped and subsequently has an abortion, the rapist wins.

Paula Westwood, executive director of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati, [argues] that men win and women lose when a child of rape is aborted.

"What has happened is, men know, 'Well, if I happen to rape a woman, I can have her get an abortion,' and then even if he goes to prison he's free of all responsibility," she says. "If (victims of rape) can carry the child to term, they're free from any guilt from an abortion and they're also freer because the man really has no hold on them, because even though the man fathered the child the woman has some victory over it."

Positively Pythonesque, isn't it?

However, should you think that slapping felony charges on a woman, her family or her friends for "facilitating an abortion" outside the state is an extreme provision that would be struck by the first court to consider it, consider what is happening in Missouri.

Last fall, Missouri passed a law against assisting a minor who crossed the state line to seek an abortion. When the law was challenged, Circuit Judge Charles Atwell issued a temporary injunction against its enforcement pending a ruling by a higher court. Atwell ruled that while the law lacked protections for free speech by persons who had no intent to assist a minor in obtaining an abortion, the statute in itself was constitutional.

Atwell said the law is unconstitutional, as it infringes on the right to free speech and due process for people who provide information and counseling to girls, and said providing information on reproductive rights would be protected. However, he said the law would be constitutional if it were interpreted with his judicial restraints. Atwell said that a lawsuit only could be brought against someone if they were familiar with the law and if they knew the girl being counseled was under 18 and also was trying to circumvent the consent requirement. "[T]he court, with substantial trepidation, finds that (the law) is constitutional" with those restrictions in place, Atwell wrote.

How one feels about parental involvement laws is irrelevant here; what matters is the legal principle being upheld. The state of Missouri has the right to control its citizens' access to abortion in any other state, regardless of that other state's own laws. So much for the argument that if Roe is overturned and abortion is criminalized in some states, women still will be free to travel to less restrictive states for abortion care.

The South Dakota ban specifies penalties only against physicians or other persons who actually might perform an abortion. However, as Lynn Paltrow and Charon Asetoyer explain in South Dakota's New Murderers, that does nothing to protect women from prosecution. If abortion becomes illegal, women are subject to prosecution under other statutes already in existence.

If the unborn are legal persons, as numerous South Dakota laws assert, then a pregnant woman who has an abortion can be prosecuted as a murderer under already existing homicide laws.

Farfetched? Not at all.

Prosecutors all over the country have been experimenting with this approach for years. In South Carolina, Regina McKnight is serving a 12-year sentence for homicide by child abuse. Why? Because she suffered an unintentional stillbirth. The prosecutors said she caused the stillbirth by using cocaine, yet, they did not charge her with having an illegal abortion '