|
In case you
missed this, the South Dakota legislature passed, and the GOP Governor signed,
a new law outlawing most abortions in that state. This is the
beginning of the legal test cases aimed straight at the Supreme Court, now that
Roberts and Alito have been added to the bench and the moderating, split-voter
Sandra Day O’Connor has departed. The target is Roe v Wade, which may or may not be amended, but there will
be much saber rattling, jihadist ranting and demagoguery in the meantime, all
of which should radicalize the fervor of fundamentalist wingnuts and hopefully,
keep those moderate values-voters who were considering abandoning Bush’s GOP in
the Red line on voting day, just like Terri Schiavo was supposed to do. So here are a
few of the many political analysis and commentaries on the subject, gleaned
discriminately from my cyber harvest today. kwc I. South Dakota conservatives seek Roe v Wade fight: term limits driving some lawmakers in this socially
conservative state. http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/breaking_news/14002880.htm This author is
a bit over the top, as they say, but makes the point that the younger
generation is just glimpsing A Brave New/Old World. S. Dakota Slaps Up Its Women By Mark Morford, SF Gate columnist, March 03, 2006 Attention all funky sexy single
intelligent women of South Dakota (assuming there are any left): It is time. Pack it
up. Strip the bed, box up the cat, load the U-Haul, call your hip friends over
in Minneapolis, move out West, or East, or anywhere with a mind-set not stuck
like a bloody nail in the moral coffin of 1845. Let this be your clarion call.
Get the hell out, right now. Here is why: Your
state hates you. Your state, apparently run by pallid sexless demagogic men who
think they know something of God and morality but know only ignominy and the
smell of sulfur and death in their nightmares, thinks you are irresponsible
dumb-ass meat, unable to handle your own decisions, your own body, your sex.
Your state's leaders and your Republican governor, Mike Rounds, wish to treat
you like meaningless, voiceless chattel. Get out now. You already know why. For everyone else
reading this, here is the nauseating news: South Dakota, in case you missed it
amid the reports of increasingly violent civil war in Iraq, the Dubai ports
fiasco and Bush's record-low
approval ratings across the board, has just passed a
sweeping anti-abortion measure that completely bans the procedure in almost
all cases -- including rape, including incest, including if you were, for some
ungodly reason, accidentally knocked up by South Dakota neocon anti-choicers
like Republican and bill sponsor Rep. Roger W. Hunt, these baggy slabs of
pallid manhood who wouldn't know true female sexual pleasure from a hole in a
mattress. Or is that being too kind? And why? Why have
these lawmakers rammed this law down South Dakota women's throats and why is it
so likely that Gov. Rounds will sign it into law, when the state is already one
of the most bitterly restrictive, the most
difficult in the nation in which to get an abortion? Why, for the sole
purpose of having the invidious law challenged all the way to the newly
realigned, neocon-approved, anti-woman Supreme Court, where the backers of the
hateful law hope to finally claim the Big Prize, the great gold ring of
self-righteous sex-hating fundie Christians everywhere: challenging Roe v.
Wade, maybe even (gasp) overturning the single most female-empowering law in
the last 50 years. Wouldn't that be swell? Here's a fascinating
aspect: Most women are stunned by this news. Most women not living in one of
the few remaining prehistoric red states cannot believe their ears, eyes,
souls. I've told a number of my youngish female friends of this hideous
development and they all respond the same way: stunned silence, then "You
can't be serious," then this ashen "Oh my God" feeling of utter
horror, followed by, "Does anyone else know this? Why isn't this making
bigger headlines? Where the hell is Oprah?" Etc. See, modern women under 40, they simply don't
accept it. They have no conception of a world in which they don't have complete
control over their flesh, their reproductive rights, their sexuality. For most women of this generation, reproductive
choice is simply a fundamental, incontrovertible human right, obvious and
ironclad and indisputable, and so to hear that it's being deeply threatened in
this back-ass BushCo world is so foreign, so surreal, it induces an immediate
cringing recoil, like watching Tom Cruise stick his tongue in Katie Holmes'
face, like watching flies feed, like seeing Dick Cheney naked. It simply does
not compute. No matter. South
Dakota's leaders, much like those in Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee,
Kentucky and Mississippi -- who've all introduced similar hateful,
anti-choice measures -- don't care about women. They don't care about rights.
But they care a great deal about power, about self-righteous ideology, about
the ever-present egomaniacal male need to control, dominate, imprison that
which it cannot understand. They care about suppression.
Here's another sordid
detail: South Dakota passed its new ban without a referendum. Translation: The frigid neocons who
wrote the law didn't actually have the nerve to allow South Dakota's own
citizens to vote on it, because they knew the odds were too great that a
majority of the state wouldn't accept it. See, even in a conservative red state
the people know when a law has gone too far. And then, the kicker:
The stage is now set for a major legal battle over the new draconian law, a
battle which will cost millions. The neocons say they've already received a bizarre pledge of a million bucks from some anonymous woman-hating
Christian rightist to help defray the legal costs. But it won't be nearly
enough. Who gets to pay for the rest? South Dakota taxpayers, most of whom
probably didn't want the damnable law in the first place. Ah, neocon politics.
You're soaking in it. Now, the good news.
Most legal experts, even those from Christian "pro-family"
anti-choice groups, are already saying the law has little chance of posing a
serious challenge to Roe v. Wade. It's simply too draconian, too vile, too
flagrantly unconstitutional. But then again, with Alito and Roberts on the
bench, you just never know. Nastier things have happened. Just check the
wiretap on your e-mail. These are the things
you need to know. We are at that point. We are right now at the apex of some
great and dirty battle, some ugly siege, the nation so overrun by the Christian
right that they finally get to make some sort of grand and desperate statement,
a vicious volley of stabs to the heart of progress and sexual rights, before
being run out of Congress this fall and Bush becomes a lame duck and the nation
slowly wakes up from this catatonic Republican-bled haze. The South Dakota
lawmakers know. They've said as much, that this is the right time to attack,
the opportunity possibly fleeting, the national gag reflex induced by these
neocons not yet at full force. "I think
the stars are aligned," said Matthew Michels, South Dakota
House Speaker and Republican, referring to the appointments of Alito and
Roberts to the Supreme Court. "Simply
put, now is the time." Sure their odds may be
long, but their hearts are black with passionate intensity. Of course, with any luck,
with any sort of divine feminine intervention, with any sort of national common
sense, this sickening attack on female choice will quickly go the way of
"intelligent design," of the Terry Schiavo zombies, of the WMD
zealots. It will dissolve and implode like the nasty moral insult it so very
is. We can only hope. And of course, vote, in November. Until then, it would
behoove the final dozen or so sexually attuned, lusciously feminine women in
South Dakota -- not to mention every teenage girl within a 1,000-mile radius --
to pack their bags and book their tickets outta town before they lock the gates
and start the fires. I hear Canada is lovely this time of year. What are you
waiting for? ALSO
SEE Scant drop seen in abortion rate if parents are told: parental notification not yielding
anticipated results. The analysis, which looked at 6 states that introduced
parental involvement laws in the last decade and is believed to be the first
study to include data from years after 1999, found instead a scattering of
divergent trends. "There are ongoing trends that are pushing
both birth rates and abortion rates down significantly, and those larger trends
are more important than the effect of these laws," said Ted Joyce, an economist at
Baruch College in New York who has studied parental involvement laws. He found
they had limited effects on small subgroups of minors but little impact over
all. Providers interviewed in 10 states with parental involvement laws all
said that of the minors who came into their clinics, parents were more often
the ones pushing for an abortion, even against the wishes of their daughters. "I
see far more parents trying to pressure their daughters to have one,"
said Jane Bovard, owner of the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo, N.D., a state
where a minor needs consent from both parents. "As a parent myself, I can
understand. But I say to parents, 'You force her to have this abortion, and I
can tell you that within the next six months she's going to be pregnant again.'
" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/national/06abortion.html II. This is a Cultural War trap: Missouri legislators in Jefferson City
considered a bill that would name Christianity the state's official
"majority" religion. House Concurrent Resolution 13 has [sic] is
pending in the state legislature... Karen Aroesty of the Anti-defamation league,
along with other watch-groups, began a letter writing and email campaign to
stop the resolution. The resolution would recognize "a
Christian god," and it would not protect minority religions, but
"protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs. The
resolution also recognizes that, "a greater power exists," and only
Christianity receives what the resolution calls, "justified
recognition." State
representative David Sater of Cassville in southwestern Missouri, sponsored the
resolution, but he has refused to talk about
it on camera or over the phone. The fact that the bill's sponsor won't talk about it tells you it isn't
likely to fly. But people who write bills like
this aren't trying to make law. Their intent is to further the right's narrative that
Christians are a persecuted minority under siege. They want to guarantee that the good
folks at the Anti-defamation league, the ACLU and Americans United fight to
have their silly legislation overturned, proving that those civil rights groups
have an anti-Christian agenda (and perhaps even a direct association with Satan). And bills like this -- you couldn't write a piece of legislation that more
obviously violates the Establishment Clause --are meant to give
those groups a victory in court, thereby
proving the existence of out-of-control activist judges dedicated to stymieing
the popular will of the Christian majority. You can see it coming a mile away. But being forewarned doesn't make
you forearmed; you'd have no choice but to jump right in and grab that bait
with both hands. – Josh Holland, Common Dreams 030506 Original item: State bill
proposes Christianity be Missouri’s official majority religion http://www.kmov.com/topstories/stories/030206ccklrKmovreligionbill.7d361c3f.html Amy Sullivan: When would Jesus Bolt? Meet Randy
Brinson, the advance guard of evangelicals leaving the GOP. “This is what gives Karl Rove
and the other GOP headcounters heartburn. A third-party candidacy by Roy Moore
would be troublesome, but conservative evangelicals are ultimately loyal to the
GOP. And while it might irritate business supporters, the administration could
probably toss moderate evangelicals a few crumbs on the environment or global
poverty. But once that door is opened, it can't be shut again. Whether or not
large numbers of moderates migrate to the Democratic Party, if they succeed in
expanding the scope of “religious issues,” the GOP will lose its lock on faith.
And so Republicans revert to the only tactic they have left: fear. The fight down in Alabama has shown
that they will do whatever they have to in order to prevent Democrats from
claiming a piece of the religious mantle, even if it means taking what could be
portrayed as the “anti-religion” stance themselves. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0604.sullivan.html |
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
