Charlie's In The Perimeter

Today's Strib editorial unleashes lots of dramatic, pejorative imagery.

Substance? Not so much:

Minnesota's abortion foes are masters of strategy. Skilled at the frontal attack, they're also adept at waiting in the tall grass for a last-minute leap.

What are they? Tigers? The Viet Cong?

What is this "sneakiness"?

From the tales being told, it seems this may be leap-year at the Legislature: Rumors are flying that Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life hopes to slip 11th-hour baggage into the Senate's supplemental spending bill.

This sort of stealth should be resisted on principle alone. The requirement that bills move through the Legislature along a prescribed path is the gold standard of Minnesota lawmaking -- meant to ward off caprice and carelessness.

Any thinking Minnesota taxpayer (i.e., any of them without one of those Bend Over For The Budget! "Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota" signs in their yard) should double-over with laughter on reading that. Or in agony.

We learned this during the debate over the Minnesota Personal Protection Act; the "Filament" connecting amendments and the bills to which they're attached is often ludicrously picayune. That's one of the reasons Mike Hatch, no friend of the gun owner, went to court in favor of the MPPA - because had the law been struck down based on the disconnect between the amendment and the bill to which it attached, virtually every spending bill in the past thirty years could have been attacked, a true nightmare for state lawmakers and judges. For the Strib editorial board - people who "know stuff" - to say such a thing with a straight face must be deliberately disingenuous, and can only be intended to deceive the audience.

But enough of that - let's go back to the "tigers and Viet Cong sneaking through the woods":

In fact, this year's MCCL bill -- which hasn't been heard or approved by a single Senate committee -- couldn't possibly find its way to the floor without special help from the Senate Rules Committee. That couldn't happen without a nod from Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, who chairs the panel.

But there's no reason to nod, for there's nothing in this year's MCCL grab bag Minnesotans need or want.

Really?

Why not?

The aptly named Abortion Regulation Act would demand more data on judicial rulings that allow abortion-seeking minors to sidestep the state's parental notification law. It would also require that doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

Right. We want to know more about cases where children who can't buy alcohol, sign a contract, play "cops 'n robbers" in school or buy spray paint are getting abortions, and prevent trainwrecks like South Dakota's commuting abortionists. The problems is...?

But we'll come back to that. Why is this bill such a danger?

Those two changes may seem innocuous, but the third is positively revolutionary: It would topple the Minnesota Supreme Court's 1995 ruling in Doe vs. Gomez, which determined that state health programs for the poor must pay for abortions just as they cover other medical procedures.

If passed, the new law would surely end up before a state Supreme Court whose composition has changed dramatically since the Gomez decision. Abortion foes' hope is the evaporation of the legal cornerstone of abortion rights in Minnesota.

Gosh, who'd have thunk it; Legislators doing their job.

That's a worrisome wish -- one the Minnesota Senate should not rush to embrace, especially in the absence of due process.

Buncombe.

The process is exactly the same as the one that's been used to fund an avalanche of state spending; if the process is "due" enough for them, it's good enough for this bill.

But apparently the Strib - which has supported separate-but-unequal First Amendment rights for anti-death activists, in supporting the restrictions on pro-life demonstrations - wants them to play by different rules in the Legislature, too.

Posted by Mitch at April 28, 2006 12:38 PM | TrackBack