South Dakota and abortion (revisited)

As I mentioned here, South Dakota was already "the most difficult place in the country to get an abortion". Well, it got even worse on Monday. From The New York Times:

The governor of South Dakota, Mike Rounds, signed [yesterday] a bill intended to ban most abortions in the state and to set up a challenge to the United States Supreme Court decision, handed down in 1973, that legalized abortion in all states.

The law would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the woman's life, with no exception for cases of rape or incest. Planned Parenthood, which operates the state's only abortion clinic, has pledged to challenge the law in court.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. The battle of battles in American politics is about to begin. I've long considered myself a moderate pro-choicer, but this struggle over women's reproductive rights pushes me more and more to the side of those who are fighting to protect those rights. The other side, it seems, wants to plunge America back into darkness.

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For more, see:

Misty at Shakespeare's Sister: "This bullshit is about control and making one group of people’s beliefs into law and not letting the individual decide what is medically and morally right. Ugh."

Steve Soto at The Left Coaster: "Just like the way the GOP bashed Kerry over his Iraq war vote, the same applies to this. McCain, Allen, and the rest either support what South Dakota and Mississippi have done, or they don't. It is a simple question."

Republicans have effectively used abortion -- hollow, unfulfilled rhetorical pledges to work to overturn Roe -- as a wedge issue to mobilize their base without scaring off moderate and independent voters who are personally uncomfortable with abortion yet who support a woman's right to choose in most cases. And now? As I've said before, many Republicans will now be exposed for what they are, which is rabidly and unapologetically anti-choice. And their presumptive presidential candidates will now be forced to explain themselves. It won't just be a matter of saying that they're for or against abortion in theoretical terms. They'll have to take sides on these latest events in South Dakota and Mississippi. Let's just see how the moderates and independents respond. (And let's see how the Democratic base responds. Is it fully mobilized yet?)

Scott Shields at MyDD makes a similar point: "Advocates for choice have been warning voters about this for years. Obviously, after a while, those warnings sounded alarmist and unrealistic to some. Unfortunately, they were neither. So here we are. This issue no longer exists in the abstract."

See also BlondeSense, Mia Culpa, Middle Earth Journal, I Blame the Patriarchy, and Swing State Project.

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Oh, you want to know how moderates and independents will respond? Well, here's one of the best, Justin Gardner at Donklephant: "What a huge step backwards South Dakota has taken today."

There you go.