I'll admit it: when it comes to child car seats, I'm a Teabagger. I miss the good old days when Mom and Dad could just pile eleven kids in the back of the Bronco and go to Pizza Hut. Pack us kids in tightly enough, and we won't budge even if there is a crash.
It's amazing the species has survived this long.
So when I saw the news that 47 states have more restrictive child safety seat requirements than South Dakota, I thought, "Whew!" (I also thought, "Ah! Star Trek reference!" but that's really a tangent.)
But then my wife, who well serves her evolutionary purpose of keeping males from eliminating offspring through Evel Knievel re-enactments, pointed out this comment from our chief executive's office:
Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who took office in January, favors fewer regulations in general. In terms of child safety in vehicles, the governor would rather encourage parents to use proper car seats, including boosters. A law requiring that they do so might not be necessary, said Tony Venhuizen, the governor's director of policy and communications.
"If you have parents who have the information and choose to ignore it, then you have to wonder if putting it into the law would really make that much difference or not," Venhuizen said. "It's a philosophical question" [Megan Luther, "One in Five Kids in Crashes Unrestrained," that Sioux Falls paper, 2011.06.25].
Hm. Given the governor's philosophy on forcing women to receive state-mandated "information" to prevent them from aborting their pregnancies, I'm surprised the governor's office responds so... casually?... to the news that 21 actual, viable human children have died in the last seven years in South Dakota in car crashes in which parents chose not to buckle them up.
The governor's office does fine work sending out information on child safety seats and even hooking people up with the right equipment if they can't afford it. But what, no mandatory child safety seat advocacy broadcast through the car stereo every time we take the kids out to eat? No mandatory 72-hour waiting period before we drive the kids to Grandma's, to give us time to drop by some private counselor's office for some finger-wagging? No $10,000 penalty on Pat Prostrollo for selling a car to a woman who then fails to buckle up her toddler and hurts the young'un in a wreck?
The governor, says his spokesman, "is very cautious about expanding regulations on individual freedoms" like the freedom to not buckle up your own child. To some extent, I'm thankful (more so than my wife, I suspect) for that general disposition. I just wish Governor Daugaard's disposition were a little more general.
p.s.: Just a thought: could it be that South Dakota's libertarian urges kick in only when we're thinking about rules that might affect our own behavior and not the behavior of abstracted others?
A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction, meaning a new abortion law will not go into effect in South Dakota on July 1.
South Dakota's new law would require women seeking abortions to undergo pregnancy counseling and a 72-hour waiting period. Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit in federal court this week, asking the judge to delay the law from taking effect.
In a ruling issued just minutes before 5 p.m. Thursday, Judge Karen Schreier decided the plaintiffs did demonstrate the need for a preliminary injunction.
[CAH: Thanks, Patty! New post is up!]
Praise god for Karen
If only one more than half of South Dakotan voters had a brain. I am thankful that Judge Schreier does.