from Talk to Action

As GOP voters repudiate Republican legislators who failed to support South Dakota's precedent-setting ban on abortion, and as Louisiana awaits Governor Kathleen Blanco's promised signature on a ban just as harsh, Ohio's legislature is raising the ante by granting a hearing to a ban on abortion introduced by State Rep. Tom Brinkman '

from Talk to Action

This Monday, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins came out swinging.

USA Today this morning gave front-page treatment to a story on the possible consequences of the U.S. Supreme Court amending its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion. "Rules on abortion may depend on where you live," headlined the newspaper. NARAL's Kellie Copeland is quoted saying "[We] feel the fight is coming back to the states." ... What this points to is the impact that the pro-life movement has had on the nation--more states than not would stand on the side of life, showing how far out the courts are on this issue of abortion. Pro-abortionists are growing desperate attempting now not only to silence the voice of the unborn but those that advocate for them as well.

Ummm ... well, Tony, not quite. Apparently fearing the same firestorm of a backlash that now has quite a few of the heroes of the South Dakota legislature scrambling to defend themselves even against more moderate challengers within their own party, plenty of their co-advocates in statehouses around the country are smelling smoke on the wind ... and prudently silencing themselves.

from Talk to Action

We all have heard South Dakota State Senator Bill Napoli's description of a woman who might qualify for an abortion under the rigid strictures of South Dakota's draconian abortion law '

from Talk to Action

While the Bible that many South Dakotans are substituting for the Constitution these days maintains that "her price is far above rubies," those same people have decreed that the worth of any woman, no matter how virtuous, plummets at "that point in time when a male human sperm penetrates the zona pellucida of a female human ovum." From that moment forward, not only her body, her hopes and her dreams, but sometimes -- despite the hollow promise of a tacked-on provision allowing "a medical procedure designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant mother" '

from Talk to Action

One can almost hear Mark Twain snorting in disgust.

(Image by Kafka/AP)
This week Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota finally ended the suspense. After a prolonged, tantalizing and agonizing period of presumably sober deliberation, Rounds signed the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act. The law protects human life beginning at "that point in time when a male human sperm penetrates the zona pellucida of a female human ovum." Unless, of course, the live human in question is a woman who wants an abortion '

Power Moves

From the LAT:

High Court to Address 'Partial-Birth' Abortions

By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court today set the stage for a major ruling on abortion by agreeing to decide whether Congress can outlaw so-called "partial birth" abortions during the mid-term of a pregnancy.

The case, to be heard in the fall, will test whether lawmakers can strictly regulate how abortions are performed.