Friday, February 24, 2006

fuck.


(via culturekitchen)


The women of South Dakota have just been screwed by their legislature.

I wrote before about how a bill was making its way through the legislation that would ban abortion in the state.

Yesterday, the SD Senate passed the bill that the House passed a couple weeks ago. They changed the language slightly, but not in a way that changed the purpose and scope of the bill. Because of the language change, though, it had to go back to the House for re-authorization.

Today, the SD House passed the bill again, by a vote of 50-18. (The Senate passed it 23-12 yesterday.)

Now, the only potential obstacle to the legislation is the (anti-choice, Republican) governor, Mike Rounds. And he's not looking to be much of an obstacle, since he's already said that he's inclined to sign the bill.

This is absolutely terrifying.

My guess for how this will go over when it makes it to the Supreme Court (which it will, since Planned Parenthood has already pledged to sue as soon as the Governor signs it):
5-4. In favour of the ban. Overturning Roe v. Wade.
My prediction for the majority: Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy
The minority: Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter, Breyer


Something even more frightening? Molly is posting about how to perform an abortion if when Roe is overturned. *sigh*


Jill at Feministe is slightly optimistic, in a weird way:
And so what Molly has posted could be potentially helpful to a lot of women, which is why I link to it. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the post, or the safety of the procedures described therein. But I trust other feminist, pro-choice women. We will create communities, and we will help each other, even if our government finds it acceptable to infringe on our most basic human rights to decide what does and doesn’t grow in our bodies. We did it before Roe, and we’ll do it after.




(Mikhaela's newest pro-choice cartoon)

1 comment:

Jen said...

If I were South Dakota and trying to overturn Roe, I would've waited too, but their legislature only meets from Jan-March, so they had to push it through quickly.

But with Casey...the way I've heard it is that Kennedy was initially going to vote with the dissent, and the only reason he voted w/ the plurality is because he's a sheep and saw the way O'Connor and Breyer were voting, and decided to go with them. So as much as I'd love to, I'm going to not be as hopeful as you.