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.

The right wingnuts keep running this photo... which aptly describes their own wingnut candidates' campaign efforts..

Twelve of the newly drawn South Dakota Legislative districts have Republican primaries for Senate; fifteen have GOP primaries for House. I keep looking for signs that even one of the radical wingnuts whom Gordon Howie claims as members of his “conservative team” has what it takes to win an election. It’s not happening in District 31. Florence K. (for McKarthy) Thompson isn’t bringing the heat in District 30.

And then there’s our friend and Gordon’s, Steve Sibson, running again for District 20 Senate against incumbent Republican Senator Mike Vehle. I tried to give Steve some advice (I truly am a sucker for underdogs… especially conservative underdogs who might help me make Democratic mischief) on reading his audience and focusing his message on practical policy.

And how does he respond? By spouting needless bromides (or are they hydrochlorides?) like this:

… democracy is another one of those deceptive words. It is a form [of] socialism too. A Constitutional Republic would support all minority rights without the 13th, 15th, and 19th amendments [Steve Sibson, comment, Madville Times, 2012.05.08].

Democracy is socialism. I understand that sounds good during the RNAD chant session at a Tea Party picnic. But most voters don’t care about the practically meaningless distinction between the Republican form of government specified in the Constitution (Article 4, Section 4) and the fundamental American value of citizen democracy. Sibson doesn’t just spit on that warm fuzzy feeling most voters get when they hear the word democracy; he kicks that feeling in its fuzzy groin by equating democracy with socialism.

Now Steve may have a useful point. I’m more than happy to point out to people that socialism done right could be very democratic. What sounds more democratic and just to you: all the power in the workplace concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy bosses, or decisions and ownership being spread out among capital and labor alike?

But that’s not the point at which Sibby is getting. He wants to convince voters to reconceptualize their government so he can get rid of the 13th Amendment, 15th Amendment, and 19th Amendment. Abolishing slavery, allowing blacks to vote, and allowing women to vote—all unnecessary, says candidate Steve Sibson.

Now is Sibson really saying that he wants to bring back slavery and disenfranchise women and minorities? It’s always hard to tell what Steve is saying. I might give him the benefit of the doubt and say he’s just stitching together another abstruse diatribe masquerading as heavy philosophy.

But if I were Senator Vehle, and if I were at all concerned that Sibson might be gaining on me, I would drop Sibson’s bombs right back on him on one mailing to every Republican in District 20:

Sibson calls for a Constitution “without the 13th, 15th, and 19th Amendments.” The 13th Amendment enshrined into law one of the historic achievements of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, the abolition of slavery. The 15th Amendment assured former slaves and men of all races that they could have a voice in our democracy. The 19th Amendment extended the vote to women, our equal partners in building America. Sibson rejects those three great advances in democracy. I do not. I defend democracy and the right of all citizens to participate freely in it [fantasy campaign flyer for Mike Vehle, 2012].

Of course, such a flyer would only appear in Davison, Aurora, and Jerauld County mailboxes if Senator Vehle thought Steve Sibson had even a remote chance of beating him. Senator Vehle thinks no such thing. Nor do I, not as long as Sibby spreads nutty propaganda like his comments on this blog instead of demonstrating his ability to operate in the practical world inhabited by 99% of the South Dakotans whose votes he seeks.

Rep. Kristi Noem continues the standard GOP sleight-of-mouth. As voters indicate their disapproval of the GOP’s War on Women, South Dakota’s lone Congresswoman tries to tell you that her votes against women’s health care don’t really matter:

Anyone who has turned on the TV, listened to the radio or read the news in the past few weeks has undoubtedly heard about the Republican Party’s supposed War on Women. So many hours have been wasted on this topic that folks actually might think it’s a real issue. It’s not.

The truth is our nation’s political leaders are using women as a means of manipulation to try to win an election. This means real issues are taking a back seat to a political sideshow. Instead of talking about how we are going to get Americans back to work or lower gas prices, talking heads on TV are bickering over whether being a stay-at-home-mom is an occupation [Rep. Kristi Noem, "Focus on Real Issues, Not Sideshows," that Sioux Falls paper, 2012.04.25].

Notice that, in classic Noem fashion, our Congresswoman can’t talk about specifics. She doesn’t address the bad policies that actually constitute the war on women’s rights, like the abortion restrictions that Noem backed here in South Dakota to drive women into second-class citizenship. She doesn’t address her efforts to make birth control harder to get. In this article, Noem never explains why women’s issues don’t matter; she just debates a label.

Let’s take a look at some of the GOP legislation that might be considered part of the War on Women:

• The Georgia House and Senate passed the “Women as Livestock Bill,” an anti-abortion bill that earned its moniker after State Rep. Terry England compared pregnant women, carrying fetuses that had already died, to cows and pigs on his farm, saying that if the animals should have to deliver dead fetuses, so should women.
• A proposed law in Arizona could force women to prove to their employers that they are not using birth control pills for pregnancy prevention — or face termination.
• Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker repealed his state’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which permitted victims of workplace discrimination to seek damages in state courts. The bill was enacted in 2009 to address the tremendous gender gap in compensation in Wisconsin.
• The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which would expand the reach of domestic violence programs, faces opposition in the U.S. Senate [Anika Rahman, "Mommy Wars: An Attempt to Disenfranchise Women," Huffington Post, 2012.04.26].

Personal health choices, freedom from employer interference with birth control, equal pay, protection from domestic violence… please tell us, Kristi, why those issues are sideshows.

I’d like to think there’s an upside here. If Noem is declaring abortion a sideshow, maybe that means she’ll tell her boss Speaker Boehner to keep the government out of uteri and finally focus on creating jobs and balancing the budget. But we know that’s not the case. When Kristi thinks she can push her oppression of women for electoral gain, she and the GOP see abortion as a primary issue. But when women start pushing back and when Republicans realize they’re losing on the issues, Kristi starts crying sideshow.

The GOP War on Women is real. If it is a sideshow, it is because it is the bait-and-switch perpetrated by Kristi Noem and the Tea Party class of 2010 who said they wanted to focus on the economy and getting government out of people’s lives but instead of focused on all too literally inserting government into women’s lives in the worst ways possible.

Related: The Senate passed the Violence Against Women Act on a 68-31 vote yesterday, with 15 Republicans setting a losing political fight aside and casting the correct vote. Senator Tim Johnson voted aye; Senator John Thune voted nay.

Also related: Noem’s boss can’t even provide some reasonable student debt relief without turning it into another ploy to take away more women’s health care.

Ann Romney made what is described as a rousing personal speech a day or two ago a Connecticut GOP dinner. Among her comments was the following statement about working women, which I can only conclude was a sheer cue card fumble… or evidence that she has not thought very hard about what she is saying:

Romney alluded to the fact that not all women can stay at home saying, “I love the fact that there are women out there who don’t have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids. Thank goodness that we value those people too. And sometimes life isn’t easy for any of us” [Andrew Kaczynski, "Ann Romney Seeks Sympathy in Stamford, Gets It," BuzzFeed: Politics, 2012.04.23].

I love the fact that there are women… who don’t have a choice…. Readers, can you think of any way in which those words, as transcribed, can be interpreted positively?

While you, dear readers, hammer away at that nugget, I’d like to address a different passage from Ann Romney’s address that strikes me as unbecoming a campaigner:

Romney told the audience at the Connecticut Republican Party’s Prescott Bush Awards Dinner in Stamford of the exhausting nature of the campaign and the unfairness of the news cycle.

“It’s such an emotionally draining thing that you go through. And the person that you’re fighting for, that you love, that you cherish, you know that they are being maligned at times,” Mrs. Romney said. “You know that they are being misrepresented at times and you know that they aren’t getting the proper treatment at times” [Kaczynski, 201204.23].

I’ll bet there are a lot of working women who would happily trade up to the Romneys’ stress of having so much income ($21.7 million) that they could quit their jobs and travel the country talking to people about whatever they please. I’d take people talking smack about me in the press over not knowing if I can make the mortgage next month in an instant.

Spare me the plaintive cries over how “exhausting” it is to campaign. The Romneys as a family have made a choice (a choice very few people enjoy) to live in campaign mode for the last five years. The Romneys appear to be holding up just fine.

Real campaigners don’t find this work exhausting. They thrive on it. They know they’ll face opposition. They know they’ll get hit with unfair attacks. True campaigners take the punches undaunted and hit back with truth and love for the fellow citizens they get to talk with and teach and be taught by.

Check your cue cards, Ann. Practice your speeches. And quit your whining.

South Dakota is a rotten place for women’s health and policy. Chamberlain government students, Lower Brule tribal members, include that discussion in your questions to Rep. Kristi Noem during her barely announced visit Monday afternoon.

Maybe also ask Rep. Noem if she plans to attend one of the three women’s rights rallies taking place here in South Dakota on Saturday, April 28. In Brookings, women and folks who like women will gather at the courthouse at 10 a.m., then march to the Post Office on Main Street. Occupy Brookings issues this announcement for its “United for Women” event:

Help defend women’s rights and pursuit of equality! Join us here in Brookings as we and Americans all across the United States come together for a few hours on this day to affirm the full rights of women.

Our Brookings rally will celebrate, among other things, the right of all women to make their own decisions about their own bodies, including their use of contraception; to live free of the threat of violence, in public and in the home; and to have full equality in the workplace.

Come with your signs, your voices, your marching feet and clapping hands! Speak out from the People’s Soapbox! Hear wise words from women of the past who have fought for equal rights! Enjoy good music, and sing along for freedom and justice!

A People’s Soapbox, where regular folks might express their views, without any vetting? That halves the chances of seeing Rep. Noem there.

Citizens will also demonstrate their support for women’s rights at rallies next Saturday on the steps of the Capitol in Pierre. Occupy Rapid City focused on women’s issues in its weekly demonstration yesterday; I hear another women’s event is in the works for Rapid City next Saturday. These events are part of a national movement promoting “We Are Women” marches next Saturday in all fifty states.

Update 2012.04.24 06:35 MDT: The Rapid City March in Solidarity for Women’s Rights starts Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Memorial Park band shell. Folks will march through downtown Rapid City. The Rapid City marchers are flying the banner of UniteWomen.org.

Feminist blog Jezebel designates South Dakota one of the worst places in America for women:

South Dakota is the seventh [worst] state on the list for a variety of reasons. First, health services for women are few and far between. There are only two abortion providers in the state which makes worst case scenarios even worse, and its remoteness makes it difficult for many South Dakota women to access emergency medical care. Last year, lawmakers passed a measure that would have imposed a 72 hour waiting period on abortion (the law was eventually struck down for placing an undue burden on women) [Erin Gloria Ryan, "The Ten Scariest Places to Have Ladyparts in America," Jezebel, 2012.04.18].

They find health and public safety for women on the Pine Ridge Reservation particularly egregious:

But on the Pine Ridge reservation, things are so bad for women that it should be a crime.

The infant mortality rate here is five times the national average, and due to high rates of alcoholism and few services available to addicts needing treatment, a larger than average percentage of babies born here suffer from Fetal Alcohol spectrum disorders. Rape of Native women who reside here is shamefully common, and often goes unprosecuted [Ryan 2012.04.18].

Don’t expect our fetus-fetishizing GOP Governor and Legislature to do anything to make safe and legal abortion more accessible to South Dakota women. But Governor Daugaard has given some attention to infant mortality and may have some policy solutions in the works.

Or maybe South Dakota should just keep hoping for the Bakken oil boom to seep south. Then we wouldn’t need women; we could just have a bunch of man camps like North Dakota.

Friends, I try to keep the Jon Stewart posts to a minimum. But when our man Thune makes the show, how can I resist?

On Monday, Senator John Thune rose with his Republican colleagues in opposition to the Buffett Rule, President Obama’s proposal to set a minimum federal income tax rate of 30% for folks making over two million dollars a year.

Senator Thune said the Buffett Rule is unworthy of the Senate’s attention because (0:45 in the Stewart clip below) it would only generate revenue equivalent to “half of one day’s worth of federal spending.” Thune and his colleagues pegged that additional revenue at $47 billion over ten years; advocates estimate slightly larger potatoes of $160 billion over ten years.

So why does this statement from Senator Thune get Jon Stewart’s attention?

…because a year and a week ago, Senator Thune spoke from the Senate floor (1:50 in the Stewart clip) to support the House GOP budget that would have eliminated funding for Planned Parenthood:

I think most of these—a lot of legislative things, a lot of things that get funded in government are an expression of someone’s ideology. Now, there are some of us who happen to believe the taxpayers in this country should not be supporting abortion; that taxpayer funds should not be going to support abortions.

The broader debate about funding for Planned Parenthood is not just ideological, it is a funding issue because they have received somewhere on the order of over $300 million a year in taxpayer funds. So when you are looking at ways to trim government, you are looking at every area of the government. You are by definition making decisions that in some cases may be based on someone’s ideology [Senator John Thune, remarks from the Senate floor, Congressional Record, April 8, 2011, p. S2293].

Senator Thune finds savings of $300 million a year worth mentioning in Senate debate when it serves his ideology and backs fellow Senator Jon Kyl’s blatant lie about Planned Parenthood. But reducing the debt by $4.7 billion a year (that’s more than 15 times as much) is peanut shells, not worthy of his support.

In other words, Thune will happily squeeze every penny of debt reduction he can from women who need health care, but he’ll balk at debt reduction that cuts into purchases of champagne and summer homes.

Rep. Kristi Noem and her fellow Republicans want to cut 19 million people from Medicaid. Taking care of our neighbors (at least the ones who don’t give big campaign contributions) evidently costs too much for the richest nation in the world.

If Kristi and the GOP would get their heads out of their backsides and get their hands out of your underpants, they would realize they could keep a whole bunch of people off Medicaid with one simple policy: supporting affordable insurance coverage for contraception:

Publicly-funded family planning services save state and federal governments $4.3 billion each year, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Contraceptive use saves almost $19 billion in direct medical costs annually and reduces the occurrence of abortion, according to the campaign, a Washington-based nonprofit [Esmé E. Deprez, "Curbing Female Reproductive Rights Raises Cost for U.S. Taxpayer," San Francisco Chronicle, 2012.04.03].

Make birth control affordable, and you help women at financial risk help themselves:

A disproportionate share of women who experience unplanned pregnancies are teenaged, unmarried or low-income with higher incidences of mental illness, unstable relationships, physical abuse and welfare assistance, said Adam Thomas, a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute in Washington. Expanded access to contraception, meanwhile, increases educational attainment and labor force participation, he said [Deprez, 2012.04.03].

And if you don’t believe me, believe big business:

The National Business Group on Health, which helps large employers structure health benefits packages, reports that most of its 346 members include contraception because it saves money. Employers who cover birth control, at an average cost of about $39 per female employee per year, end up saving about $9,000 per female employee in any two-year period compared to those who don’t, according to a report from the nonprofit, which doesn’t take political positions [Deprez, 2012.04.03].

The benefits of insurance coverage for contraception demonstrate the utter disconnect between Republicans’ culture war platitudes and good fiscal sense. Birth control is basic health care, but birth control is also cost control.