Disproprotionate

There's a classic cartoon that appeared about forty-odd years ago in New Yorker that showed a map of the United States drawn from a New Yorker's perspective. Manhattan was huge, taking up over half of the map. The other boroughs, Jersey, Connecticut and New England together took up most of the rest of the map; the entire rest of the United States was maybe 10% of the map.

A conceptual map of the American political landscape drawn by someone liberal enough to be on the Strib editorial board would look similar; "Reproductive Health", as abortion is euphemistically called, would be the biggest issue by far.

About the upcoming Alito confirmation hearings, the Strib editorial board says the nominee...:

has a chance to join the high court. U.S. senators are gearing up even now to determine his fate -- and, whether they know it or not, the future of the nation.

The future of the nation? Wow - on what issue hangs the very future of the nation?

The President's war powers, especially the right to surveil people communicating with captured Al Quaeda figures? First Amendment rights to non-institutional journalists? A serious Third Amendment challenge?

Nah. Abortion in South Dakota.

Abortion is not my hottest-button topic; I can understand why it's other peoples' hottest-button topic. Since government governs by the consent of the governed, some compromise is not only necessary, but inevitable. Which doesn't take away from the fact that I think abortion is wrong, except where the mother's life is in danger.

And it'd be a fine idea if, in the spirit of compromise, the pro-"choice" community would allow, perhaps, that a "lump of tissue" that, absent any interference or medical care has a three in four chance of being born, alive, as a living, breathing human being is more than just a run-of-the-mill tumor, to be excised before it metastasizes into a terminal condition for one's lifestyle.

But no. The Strib - quick as they are to condemn the "extremism" of the likes of the Taxpayers' League on utterly temporal issues like taxes - heads for the extremes themselves - as in this piece on abortion in South Dakota entitled "An American Right Is Under Siege".

An American right? Is it just me (possible) or does this imply that, to the Strib editorial board, abortion is on a par with a free press, speech, assembly, security in one's home and the right to a lawyer and a jury? (And for such absolutists on this "American right", it's interesting how blase they were about the Second Amendment - but I digress).

Their beef - the people of South Dakota, acting through their legislators, have made abortion a rather difficult thing to find in South Dakota:

Minnesota has a lot to share with its nearby states, and medical expertise is high on the list. But things have gone awry when a next-door neighbor must ship in Minnesota doctors to perform a procedure local physicians could easily undertake. That's what has happened in South Dakota, where the fight over reproductive rights has grown so heated that getting an abortion is just this side of impossible.

Hence the flying Minnesota doctors -- four of them, who take turns showing up at South Dakota's only abortion clinic to provide a service that no doctor in the state dares to offer. Never mind that the procedure is legal -- and that the U.S. Supreme Court has declared its availability a constitutional right. South Dakota's abortion foes have rendered those facts nearly irrelevant by branding as a "baby-killer" any doctor willing to perform abortions. Not surprisingly, no doctor remains willing. South Dakota has become one of the three states in the nation where getting an abortion is most difficult.

Leaving aside the inflammatory "baby-killer" crack - yes, pro-lifers say it, but we have a First Amendment, and it even applies to people like pro-lifers! - what the Strib leaves out is that the majority of the people of South Dakota, acting through their legislature, have passed laws that make abortions hard, maybe impossible to get. South Dakotans that want abortions - usually an elective procedure by even the most vile liberal standards - have to travel someplace, either to the Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls, or to a neighboring state. The problem, to the Strib, is that the people of South Dakota have the temerity to pass and enforce laws on their own, without Washington's bye.

Surely Minnesotans shouldn't resent lending out a few doctors [I wasn't aware that they were government property... - Ed.]. But they ought to take real umbrage at the movement that makes the arrangement necessary. South Dakota has long been in the vanguard of the quest to fulfill by intimidation a goal lawmakers and courts have so far declined to deliver: an abortion embargo.

Huh? A goal "...lawmakers..." have declined to deliver? But the very next line, the article says...:

Not that South Dakota's Legislature hasn't been trying. Last year, a bid to ban abortion outright -- in direct defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Roe vs. Wade -- failed by a single vote. In 2005, lawmakers passed five laws restricting abortion. This year state leaders are almost certain to consider proposals that would oblige any abortion-seeker to watch an ultrasound of her fetus and to receive psychological counseling and warnings about abortion's presumed dangers before the procedure.

So is this something South Dakota is doing in its Legislature, or in spite of it?

The Strib is concerned about rights, dammit!

South Dakota's drama might be barely worth a worry but for the example it sets and the future it portends. Many states -- Minnesota included -- have passed laws forcing women to clear an obstacle course on their way to an abortion clinic. Such hindrances have worked lamentably well to make pursuit of an abortion more arduous -- though in most states, women eventually reach their destination. In South Dakota, the destination has virtually vanished; but for a few frequent-flying Minnesota doctors, the abortion choice would disappear altogether.

It's hilarious, of course; Abortion is a "right" only because a court 32 years ago conjured emanations and penumbras from whole cloth, finding a case for rule from the bench in a Constitution written to prevent it.

Actually reading the Constitution? Pshaw, says the Strib:

In applying to work in the Reagan Justice Department in 1985, Alito emphasized his belief that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

Having secured the job, Alito soon thereafter spelled out his favored strategy to "advance the goals of bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe vs. Wade": Until the time is right for a "frontal attack" on Roe, Alito wrote, the ruling's opponents should focus on "mitigating its effects" -- by supporting just the sort of restrictions that have made abortion so hard to get in South Dakota and beyond.

The Strib states this like it's a sinister thing.

Fact: Roe is a miserably-written decision.

Fact: People have the right to enact change in their society; they do this by electing legislators and executives that support their goals. The Strib's fantasy life aside, we still have that right -a more fundamentally "American" right than abortion, to be sure, and certainly not one that had to be invented by a band of ex-lawyers in Washington. That activism can, and does, include "mitigating the effects" of all kids of court decisions until sanity can prevail.

It's not like I expect better from the Strib, of course; the only question is to what to ascribe it; muddled thinking, or an overt desire to feed the people only half of the story?

Posted by Mitch at January 3, 2006 07:06 AM | TrackBack