The Northern Hills Patriots subjected the District 31 Legislative candidates to a question on abortion… a social issue which ought to be a moot point in South Dakota, which already makes it harder to get an abortion than any other state in the union. Ladies, brace yourselves:

House candidate John Teupel, who cited his fundagelical cred at the top and bottom of the forum, said that nine hours of testimony on an abortion bill that came before his committee during his earlier service in the Legislature broke him down to tears. He suggests he might compromise on cases of rape and incest, but then he launched into the usual grandstanding about how all you women are out there having irresponsible sex. You’re housing a living being in your body, just as you would in your house, says Teupel. You can’t decide to kill a child in your house, so you can’t decide to kill a living being in your body. “I don’t see what the difference is,” Teupel declared, “other than time and nutrition when it’s born and when it’s in the mother’s womb.”

Wow. Teupel seems to wholly dismiss the woman’s unique nine-month role as the only viable shelter for that fetus, as well as the unique and inviolable autonomy each of us holds over our own bodies.

Non-FDA-certified medical expert Gary Coe shows his true Tea Party stripes by always looking under the bed for monsters. He claims Planned Parenthood promotes abortion to make money. He manages to tie in local Tea Party bugaboo Senate Bill 38, claiming that by deeming pregnancy an emergency condition, that ObamaCare-enacting legislation somehow promotes abortion. He then contends that Planned Parenthood does nothing to counsel women and only kills babies and sells birth control.

Again, wow: haven’t we heard and debunked lies like this before?

Tim Johns probably lost every vote in the room by speaking sanely. He said the Legislature can’t overrule the Supreme Court and that we must deal with the law of the land as it is. At best, he said, change takes time. He did hint toward the fallacy of equating the rights of blacks with the rights of fetuses. But he at least made it sound like relegating women to second-class citizenship is not his first priority.

Incumbents Rep. Fred Romkema and Sen. Tom Nelson sounded similarly sane. Romkema reminded folks that he voted against South Dakota’s challenged 72-hour waiting period for abortions and concluded with a simple “I struggle with this issue.” Nelson said South Dakota already has pretty restrictive laws.

On abortion rights, Lawrence County voters have three out of five candidates who at least sound sane on abortion… and two candidates who will likely waste more time insulting women and chasing bogeymen instead of balancing the budget.

Tiffany Campbell wants to get Americans talking about abortion. Not fighting, but talking. She wants your help.

Campbell played a key role in the campaign to stop the last major abortion ban to face a statewide vote in South Dakota. Back in 2008, she sacrificed her medical privacy and spoke out about her 2006 pregnancy. Her doctors told her that the twins she was carrying shared one heart and could not both survive. To ensure one child could live, Campbell chose to abort the other. Her son Brady is alive and well. Children like Brady would not be if South Dakota enacted an abortion ban like that Campbell helped defeat in 2008.

Campbell is deeply concerned about the encroachment on women’s rights that we thought Roe v. Wade established in 1973. She is also concerned about the polarization of the issue that keeps fellow citizens from finding common understanding and practical solutions. To perhaps restore some sens eof common purpose in the national discussion of abortion, Campbell is now working with director Juan Reinoso to put together a documentary on abortion battles nationwide:

…this film will branch out into the national debate, discussing legislation for and against abortion and how the greatest court in the land made a decision for women that is somehow continually undermined on local levels.  By delving into the reasoning and belief of crusaders on BOTH sides of the issue, this film will ultimately attempt to bridge the gap between hatred and understanding so that both sides may learn how to TALK about the issue instead of ATTACK it [publicity material, abortion documentary proposal, downloaded 2012.05.15].

Campbell is raising money for the development phase of this project. With her proposed fundraising goal of $10,000, Campbell will be able to line up a line producer and research assistant and get the ball rolling.

If you think this project has merit, Campbell welcomes your contributions. Click on the documentary website to find out how you can help.

Yesterday Governor Dennis Daugaard vetoed Senate Bill 157, legislation sponsored by Senator Russell Olson (R-8/Wentworth) to help Daktronics sell more electronic billboards and muck up the view in Rapid City. I note with glee the Governor’s willingness to tell both big business and the Senate Majority Leader to sit on a tack.

But I also note what appears to be a situational commitment to the separation of powers in this veto. The primary reason Governor Daugaard cites for his veto is his desire not to interfere legislatively with pending litigation. Lamar Advertising and Rapid City are tangling in federal court over Rapid’s local outdoor advertising regulations. SB 157 would pretty much decide the lawsuit in Lamar’s favor and override Rapid City’s local ordinance. Governor Daugaard deems such legislative interference in a matter before the judiciary “inappropriate” and says, “Before we seek to change this law, we should understand the meaning of the current law.”

Fair enough. But the Governor did not apply similar reasoning to HB 1254, which amended South Dakota’s coercive-counseling abortion restrictions. Those restrictions are mostly injoined by federal court order as Planned Parenthood argues its lawsuit against that unconstitutional statute. Yet Governor Daugaard signed changes to that challenged law that could affect the lawsuit.

Now I understand SB 157 and HB 1254 are different creatures. Governor Daugaard contends his veto of SB 157 is a “unique” instance of avoiding state legislative interference in an “isolated local matter.” The Rapid City lawsuit does not involve state government; the lawsuit over our abortion law does.

So here’s my fundamental constitutional question for the day: can a litigant state change legislation that is getting it sued before the judge rules on that suit?

Governor Daugaard cites one other reason for his veto of SB 157 that may bear on our view of South Dakota’s abortion laws. The Governor expresses concern about passing SB 157 so soon after Rapid City voters passed their local billboard ordinance. I’m glad the Governor respects the will of the voters… but why do we not hear such concern on abortion laws? A majority of South Dakota voters have rejected more restrictive abortion laws in two statewide ballot measures, yet the Governor signed last year’s offensive abortion restrictions into law.

That analogy, too, is not perfect: the Governor may be able to differentiate the issues by citing numbers: the Rapid City law got 66% approval, while the two abortion measures were rejected by only 55%. The Rapid City law was approved just last summer; South Dakota voters rejected previous abortion bans in 2006 and 2008, three long years ago.

Such numerical hair-splitting doesn’t sit well with me. But I invite your analysis of the consistency of Governor Daugaard’s vetoes.

Update 2012.03.18 11:17 CDT: Mr. Price sends me an article reminding us why it’s so hard for local governments to restrict billboards: the billboard companies spend big money to fight democracy… and politicians want those big signs for their campaigns.

Blog neighbor Tim Gebhart is right, and that Sioux Falls paper is wrong: censoring this Doonesbury cartoon on abortion laws passed by various states is as hypocritical as the Republicans who want to keep government out of everyone’s health care except when they want to punish women for having sex.

To make up for that Sioux Falls paper’s reticence, I reprint the censored cartoon, as Mr. Gebhart has. I would say enjoy… but that is not the appropriate response to this skewering of Republican priorities.

Doonesbury, by Garry Trudeau, 2012.03.15

Skewering. Oops.

We may be safe. The deadline for South Dakota legislators to submit individual bills was Thursday. 469 bills are in the hopper, and there is no fetal pain or fetal personhood bill. We’ve dodged the worst certain ignorant misogynists could foist on us, but we still must contend with three abortion-related bills. One sneaks in more restrictions, one tinkers with existing restrictions, and one challenges the tyrants:

1. House Bill 1185 comes from a passel of Tea Partiers who hate the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act but are happy to cite it to justify making it harder for women to get insurance coverage for abortion. Even though abortion is basic health care, Representative Jon Hansen (R-25/Dell Rapids) wants to prohibit insurers from covering abortion. HB 1185 exceeds the parameters of federal restrictions on abortion coverage: whereas the PPACA allows insurers to give straight-up coverage for abortions carried out “in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the woman would be endangered,” Rep. Hansen’s bill says regular policies can’t cover abortion unless the woman is going to die. Women who want “elective abortions” must pay a supplemental premium, which actuarially speaking, means women may end up paying something pretty close to the full price of abortion services themselves.  As an added bite out of your privacy, if you get insurance from your employer, you get to tell your boss each year whether you are choosing or rejecting abortion coverage.
2. The best Misogynist-in-Chief Roger Hunt (R-10/Brandon) could muster this year was HB 1254, a revision of his judicially ridiculed and enjoined coercive counseling bill from last year. Rep. Hunt gets rid of some of the language that Judge Karen Schreier found indefensible (like talk of the woman’s “desire” rather than “will”). It drops the definitions that required physicians to review and discuss with women every article published on abortion and associated risk factors published since 1972, even the bogus ones. And HB 1254 makes it a Class 2 misdemeanor for anti-abortion “counselors” to release any information obtained in their sessions with women seeking abortions. But the bill leaves intact the oppressive 72-hour waiting period and the mandatory unlicensed counseling that hopes to make abortion practically impossible in South Dakota.
3. Some people are trying to do the right thing. HB 1150 tells South Dakota’s coercive counseling centers that they can’t engage in false advertising… you know, like saying you offer “comprehensive services” when you don’t directly provide abortions, emergency contraception, or referrals for such services. Rep. Peggy Gibson (D-22/Huron) and Sen. Angie Buhl (D-15/Sioux Falls) are the lead sponsors on this bill. They are joined by six House Democrats and one Senate Republican, Deb Peters of Hartford (oh, is that Lora Hubbel I hear announcing her primary challenge?). Come on, Legislature! You’re all about truth in advertising, right?

Previously, the House killed HCR 1001, which simply sought to promote awareness of reproductive rights. Alas, the majority in Pierre remain committed to throttling women’s rights and banning abortion… which only makes abortion more frequent and more dangerous.

Update 2012.02.01 06:25 MST: RCJ’s David Montgomery confirms that we won’t be talking about fetal pain in the 2012 Legislature. Anti-abortion activists apparently have too much on their plate defending South Dakota’s existing violations of women’s rights. Montgomery also gets Leslee Unruh on record saying that the truth in advertising called for in HB 1150 would put all pregnancy centers, including hers, out of business. Yahoo! Do pass!

There are no anti-abortion bills in the South Dakota Legislature’s hopper yet. But Rep. Peggy Gibson (D-22/Huron) and Sen. Angie Buhl (D-15/Sioux Falls) have introduced House Concurrent Resolution 1001, to recognize this coming week as Reproductive Rights Awareness Week. My initial reaction is that this resolution dies fast, but believe it or not, HCR 1001 has one more Republican sponsor than Democrat.

The resolution comes on the 39th anniversary of Roe V. Wade Sunday. It also comes on the heels of a new World Health Organization study that finds banning abortion is really counterproductive in reducing abortion and protecting women:

Countries with restrictive abortion laws did not have a corresponding decrease in abortion rate – in some cases, the reverse was true.

Professor Beverly Winikoff, from Gynuity, a New York organisation which pushes for access to safer abortion, wrote in the Lancet: “Unsafe abortion is one of the five major contributors to maternal mortality, causing one in every seven or eight maternal deaths in 2008.

“Yet, when abortion is provided with proper medical techniques and care, the risk of death is negligible and nearly 14 times lower than that of childbirth ["Dangerous Abortions 'On the Rise' Says WHO," BBC, 2012.01.19].

Banning abortion makes moral granstanders feel good, but it doesn’t stop abortion. It drives women to more dangerous abortions. The frequent overlap between anti-abortion sentiment and anti-contraceptive sentiment may mean you end up with more unwanted pregnancies, more abortions, and more women dying.

Tell me again, who’s pro-life here?

Dr Richard Horton, the Lancet’s editor, said: “These latest figures are deeply disturbing. The progress made in the 1990s is now in reverse.

“Condemning, stigmatising and criminalising abortion are cruel and failed strategies.”

…The UK Department for International Development part-funded the study, and International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell MP said it was a “tragedy” that the number of “back-street” abortions was rising.

“Women should be able to decide for themselves whether, when and how many children to have – but for many this is not a reality as they have no access to family planning” [BBC, 2012.01.19].

Let’s kill fewer moms and fewer babies. Support Gibson and Buhl’s HCR 1001, support reproductive rights awareness… and let’s not waste any Legislative time with any more harmful abortion restrictions.

Consider this: Governor Dennis Daugaard is willing to sign into law abortion restrictions that face clear and predictable constitutional challenges. He will wager over a million tax dollars on litigation to see if maybe he can get the right lawyers to throw the right sticky spaghetti at a judicial wall that tends to reject such constitutional abuses.

But when the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires South Dakota to create a health insurance exchange, Governor Daugaard says oh no, that’s too uncertain, it might be overruled in court, so we’re not setting up an exchange. So far, the courts have ruled more often in favor of the PPACA. The exchanges themselves don’t seem to be central to the court challenges against the PPACA. Even if things like the individual insurance mandate are overturned, starting work now on a health exchange gets the ball rolling on a system that will help more consumers get insurance and lower overall costs.

Short form: Governor Daugaard will throw your tax dollars away on uncertain lawsuits to grandstand on abortion, but he won’t invest effort in a more certain program to improve your access to affordable health insurance. Once again, politics trumps principle and practicality.

Federal Judge Karen Schreier has ruled that purveyors of pious coercion and false science like the Alpha Center and Black Hills Crisis Pregnancy Center can intervene in Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against South Dakota’s unconstitutional 72-hour waiting abortion period. Judge Schreier says the CPC’s may intervene because they stand to lose 700 new clients a year if the law is overturned.

Now wait a minute: the Alpha Center’s Leslee Unruh and her cronies are always hooting about how Planned Parenthood promotes abortion just in the interest of drawing clients and making money. But now Leslee and her fellow (uncertified) “counselors” elbow their way into the court by claiming their “right” to gain more clients from a state-sponsored registry?

Please, dear readers (and I’m sure you’re up to this task), clarify for me this double standard.