Mike Stark of Firedoglake visited a Town Hall meeting in Virginia, and spoke with a man who said,

I can think of nothing worse than to have these people in here who believe in abortion raising a child. That is the scariest thing in my life.

Stark interprets this to mean "he thinks you can't be a good parent or love your kids if you are pro-choice," but that's actually somewhat generous given the next thing the guy says:

There's millions of kids killed every year, and if they weren't they'd be sitting in here saying, "give me healthcare."

His point isn't that pro-choice people can't love their kids, it's that they'll turn their kids into greedy little socialists. To him, asking for healthcare is an unreasonable, even childish demand, one so dangerous that people who would make it shouldn't reproduce. Whether or not you think a person's political views affect their parenting skills (and I'd argue that if those views include, say, homophobia, they do), making decisions about who should have kids should never be part of the debate.

A little less surprising than the Democrats-should-abort screed, but no less upsetting, in the news that a federal judge has upheld a South Dakota law that requires doctors to tell women that abortion "will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." The law requires that this and six other points of varying veracity be included in a written statement given to each pregnant woman so she can give "informed consent." To her credit, Judge Karen Schreier struck down two of the points — doctors won't be required to tell women "that the pregnant woman has an existing relationship with that unborn human being and that the relationship enjoys protection under the United States Constitution and under the laws of South Dakota" or that they face "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide" if they go through with an abortion. She also ruled that doctors must use the term "human being" in "a biological sense and not an ideological one" — but it's not clear what that means.

The question of at what point a fetus becomes a human being is obviously still a contentious one, and it's not clear how telling a woman that what she's carrying is human "in a biological sense" (or whole, separate, unique, or living, the first two of which are definitely debatable) is going to make her more informed. It's not as though women think they're aborting sheep fetuses or something. Of course, the law is pretty transparent — it's not really about informing women, it's about making them feel guilty so they don't have abortions. Leslee Unruh, founder of a crisis pregnancy center in Sioux Falls that campaigned in favor of the bill, says the ruling is "a huge, fatal blow" to abortion. She adds, "This is the unraveling of Roe."

Cara of The Curvature prefers the term "Death by a Thousand Cuts" for attempts by Unruh and others to chip away at abortion rights in South Dakota. She points out another bill, SB92, which would require that abortion providers set aside two hours for each patient to discuss the procedure on the day before it is performed — even if the patient waives the consultation or doesn't show up. Since South Dakota has only one abortion clinic, which can only perform abortions once a week because providers must be flown in from out of state, the two-hour rule would likely further restrict abortion access in South Dakota. Cara believes this is intentional. The South Dakota legislature is saying, she writes,

if you want to keep providing abortions, we're going to make it a hell of a lot more expensive for you. You're going to have to take more flights. You're going to have to charge more. You're almost certainly going to have to perform abortions on more than one day every week. And we're going to waste every single second of your time that we can.

Unfortunately, that's what the "human being" explanation sounds like too — an insult to women's intelligence, and a waste of their time.

Abortion Debate Solved, Teabag Style [Firedoglake]
Both Sides Claim Victory In Ruling Over Abortion Law [AP, via NYT]
South Dakota Fails In Abortion Ban; Attempts Death By A Thousand Cuts [The Curvature]

Even though, superficially, Measure 11 would allow women to get abortions in cases of rape or incest, in practice it would still be incredibly difficult for survivors of such crimes to terminate their pregnancies. Jan Nicolay of the Campaign for Healthy Families tells Salon that the wording of Measure 11 is so complicated, it would be nearly impossible for women to get legal abortions. "The physician would almost have to get a legal opinion before taking any steps to help the victim of a rape or incest situation. That's how difficult they are to understand. They aren't intended to be real exceptions," she says.

In other sad choice news, our favorite abortion blogger What To Expect When You're Aborting has set her archive to private because other bloggers merely suspected of writing her blog have received death threats. "[I]f you’re some malevolent troll who is beating up on people’s families because of this you need to step the fuck off. that is some deranged shit — you know how you are," she writes. She's currently figuring out the most prudent way to proceed, and a later entry says, "The coppers and safety servers are involved," so hopefully the full archives will be back soon.

There is a single bright side: the Missouri Supreme Court upheld a law earlier this week that allows female prisoners unfettered access to abortion. That's little solace when South Dakota anti-choice advocates like Rev. Steve Hickey are telling the Washington Post that God has personally chosen South Dakota to challenge Roe. "He is giving the nation a window of opportunity to address this. He's picked the state that can pull it off," Hickey says. I second the sentiments of a commenter on the Nation's website: "Well, I was chosen by God to call Rev. Hickey an opportunist. How you like them apples?"

South Dakota Ban Is Back [Salon]
S. Dakota Readies Again for Abortion Fight [Washington Post]
I Am Spartacus [What To Expect When You're Aborting]
Supreme Court Refuses Missouri Abortion Rights Appeal [Feminist Majority Foundation]
S. Dakota Goes After Choice (Again) [The Nation]

Earlier: Court Rules In Favor Of Calling Fetuses "Living Human Beings"
Blogging An Abortion: "Precious, Silver-Tongued, Knocked Up 16 Year Olds Where Are You??"

According to Bazelon:

[The 8th Circuit Court] bought the state's argument that the statute circumvents ideology by defining "human being," elsewhere in the statute, as "an individual living member of the species Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation." Presto, said the majority—with that definition, the "truthfulness and relevance" of the provision "generates little dispute." Yes, this logic is as tautological as it sounds. The legislature basically defined "human being" to include unborn human beings…As Yale law professor Robert Post says in a 2007 article in the University of Illinois Law Review, "If South Dakota were to enact a statute requiring physicians to inform abortion patients that they were destroying the 'soul' of their unborn progeny, and if it were explicitly to provide in the statute that 'soul' is defined as 'human DNA,' the evasion would be obvious." Instead, South Dakota has co-opted human being and attached its own meaning to it.

If that weren't bad enough, the South Dakota law requires doctors to talk to patients about "increased risk of suicidal ideation and suicide" that allegedly come with undergoing an abortion. While there are some studies that back up claims of increased depression post-abortion, those studies are, to put it mildly, hotly disputed, and many doctors, including some who probably live in South Dakota, don't believe them. "Our doctors are now being asked to say things they do not believe are true," Sarah Stoesz, the head of Planned Parenthood in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Minnesota tells Slate. I'm sort of at a loss for what to do, as there are mere weeks before this idiotic law is going into effect, but here's the website for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. They have a pledge you can sign against the South Dakota ruling and information about donating.

Telling Doctors What To Think [Slate]