Ok, today I'm going to take my lead from YAB and talk about the news. Today I found 20 minutes of free time that I used to browse the headlines on Google News.
There were some interesting stories.
It would seem that Paul Walker's new movie will leave audiences running scared from the theater (ba-zing!). Blackberry's could get shut down because of a patent infringement suit. And history is being re-written since scientists have found fossils of a Platy-beaver-pus from millions of years ago.
But that's now why I'm blogging.
I'm here today because South Dakota is obviously filled with complete and utter MORONS.
In this article, I read that they are about to pass a state-wide ban on abortion. The only exception they will make to this ban is if the mother's life is in danger.
Now, I'm pretty sure I've blogged about abortion before... so I'll not repeat my opinions. In fact, that's not even why I'm writing this. You see, there's a catch to this whole hair-brained scheme of theirs. To uphold this new law, they have to get the supreme court to overturn Roe vs Wade.
um.... hello????
I don't care if you clone Pat Roberts enough times to fill all of the supreme court seats... you can't just blatantly challenge that ruling and expect to win. Well, ok, if Pat Roberts was the whole supreme court then maybe it would work. But he isn't!
Anyone who's read books and watched movies knows that change comes gradually. If you are really serious about overturning abortion laws then you have to chip away at them. Work on "parental consent/notification" issues, partial birth abortions, etc. Don't just go to the Supreme court and tell them to change their minds.
You're going to lose! And you've wasted the tax-payers' money by pursuing it!
Idiots! (Napoleon dynamite voice)
So, there are a lot of you who know a hell of a lot more about this stuff than I do. Am I way off base? Do they stand a chance, since the newest justices are anti-abortion?
As I said, this isn't a discussion about abortion beliefs... it's a "how to change the government" discussion. You can take your opinions about abortion and go somewhere else.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Stupid South Dakota
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9 comments:
There's also no exeption in the new proposed ban for permanent damage to the mother or future infertility. But that's beside the point.
I honestly don't know. Maybe in today's court, you really can put up Roe v. Wade with more than a slim chance of getting it overturned. I have no doubt that the majority of the court disagrees with abortion personally, or at least publicly. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they would be willing to rule that the law should forbid it. Maybe personal privacy rights and precedent will be enough to make them believe that to overturn Roe, would be to fly in the face of law. I guess it depends on whether or not the supposed smartest lawyers in the land, can look past personal beliefs, and rule on the basis of good law. That's their job.
Leaving aside the idea that I don't really see Roe being overturned, I have very little doubt that the chipping indeed shall commence. Not as many people notice when they lose their rights slowly. I suppose that the sneaky way is indeed the most effective.
Someone had to take the new court for a test run though, to test their attitude towards the issue. The opinions could prove very valuable to guage what they will be willing to do in the future, even if their decision goes against SD.
I agree with Sarah. She said it pretty well.
The problem with the "chipping away" approach is that it isn't really geared towards "outlawing abortions". You can ban partial birth and make minors get parental consent, but any law that goes too far in banning abortions will always be overturned until Roe v. Wade is overturned.
I'm not sure how likely that is. No matter how the pro-life lobby tries to spin it, surveys of Americans show a majority support abortion rights. They've not as motivated right now, because they win most battles on the back of Roe. If Roe were ever overturned, I'm not sure how long that would last, because it would motivate the pro-choicers and that would help get Senators and Presidents highly supportive of reproductive rights elected.
I searched your blog for abotion and Roe and I didn't find anything...what are your opinions?
"Chipping Away" is for sissies.
You look at some of the past issues that have torn our country apart. Bibles in our schools,Civil Rights, and the original Roe vs. Wade case. These issues erupted and were resolved with a speed and efficiency that would make German soldiers with their "Blitzkrieg" tactics envious. I mean in the course of a few years we went from black and white bathrooms to just male and female restrooms. Teachers praying in the morning in their classrooms to..well...teachers not praying in the morning in their classrooms.
My point is that if you and a group of pissed, like-minded individuals protest and go legal-medevil on The Man's ass, stuff WILL get done.
I'm not posting my aobrtion opinions here. They're irrelevant to the discussion.
My point with the "chipping away" comment is better explained through a different example. Smoking. There are a lot of reasons why smoking (or at least the selling of cigarettes) cannot be banned. So what some states are doing is chipping away at it. First, they said you can't smoke in government buildings. Then some states took it further and banned it from any public buildings. This is going to continue until there are just a few designated smoking areas. And when this happens, you'll have less smokers. Once they are in a minority, and the cigarette companies are less important to our economy, then banning cigarettes is suddenly not a rediculous idea.
So my point is that if they chipped away at abortion like that... and made it harder for someone to get one, then numbers are likely to go down. And once they get the ball rolling down the hill, it might just get to the bottom eventually. As for looking at this as a "sneaky way of removing freedoms"...well, that depends on whether you look at abortion as a crime, or a freedom (again, I'm not taking a side).
You guys have all eloquently made your points. So here's my contribution to the discussion. I lived in SD for 6 months. And yes, they are complete and utter morons. Seriously. :)
HEY! A lot of my relatives live in or are from South Dakota!
Oh. Wait. I forgot. You're absolutely right. Sorry about that.
In any case, the 'chipping away' method is a good way to change society through law. The 'storm the gates' method Trian mentioned only works well when changing law to match society. I guess to really change society and then law from one extreme to another would require first a slow 'quiet' accretion of laws designed to restrict the society in such a way that a behavior becomes marginalized, followed by a fast 'loud' campaign to move the behavior from marginalized to illegal.
What most idealogues on either side of the fence don't realize is the problem with making something illegal as opposed to marginalized - it polarizes a minority into concerted action.
Pro Lifers shouldn't be working to make abortion illegal, they should be working to make abortion a less attractive alternative for the resolution of an unwanted pregnancy compared to other options, which in most cases it presently isn't. That may involve some legal action, but it doesn't involve actually making abortions illegal.
Gah. That sounded more coherent inside my head. Still, the thought's there.
I definitely agree that if pro-lifers wanted to reduce the number of abortions, they should make abortion a less attractive option. (hated using the word attractive right there, but it'll do.) If there were more economic and educational opportunities out there for people who choose not the follow through with a pregnancy because of money reasons, then maybe there would be more security, and more willingness to have a child. I mean, there aren't too terribly many people who positively never want to have a child someday , but if you aren't able to bear it financially, you might choose to terminate. If more people were educated and thusly had more access to decent paying jobs with healthcare, more people would consider allowing the pregnancy to be an option.
Make it about economics. Make it about finding people jobs and making them secure. No one wants to bring a child into poverty.
Not that money is the only reason one might not choose to have a child. But, you know, that's one problem.
Moving entirely away from abortion, and toward a more abstract view of changing the law:
In a way, if you want to change the law in a meaningful way, you need to change the culture / society the law is part of, or the law will be repealed, ignored, or both.
You can change society through government action, but it has to be weak positive actions and negative actions, not strong ones.
To explain -
A strong negative action is to completely ban something. A weak negative action is to make something less feasible - to require more effort than it otherwise would.
A strong positive action, conversely, is to require something, a weak positive action is to make that something easier to do.
Society will occasionally demand that laws be put in place to enforce a certain degree of conformity, like laws against murder, or laws requiring a licence to operate certain heavy machinery. If you try to change society with strong laws, however, it becomes readily apparent which is stronger, law or society.
The way to effect societal change is with weak government action. As Sarah said, economics. To use abortion as an example; if you were to require a certain number of hours of counseling by a non-biased professional, eliminate third trimester abortions, and mandate a fee for the service, abortions would still be within the realm of possibility, but would be less easy to get.
At the same time, they would still be a more attractive option than carrying to term for some people.
If you then incentivize (hate to use marketing terms, but this one applies) carrying to term, say by providing a tax break or an outright subsidy to pregnant women, revamping the adoption system (no offense intended to anyone, but it's currently a farce) for those who are willing to carry to term but are unwilling or unable to be parents, and providing delivery services free of charge, you've pretty much made abortion a fringe option, rather than a serious contender.
To bring this back to the abstract, you can do that for any issue you name - make the undesired activity less attractive, and make the desired activity more attractive, and society will take the course of least resistance. Eventually, people will say 'yes, we have the right to do that, but why would we?'. At that point, the law becomes irrelevant.
i know this is a "gov't" discussion....keep your laws off my body, Amen :)
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