Hometown Reds

I've got the blues over the Reds in my home state. With help from a religious conservative base, South Dakota made it a crime this week to perform an abortion, except in the rare case to save the mother's life. I strongly oppose this law. There are a number of reasons as to why I oppose -- even abhor -- this new law, but I will expound on just one reason here for the sake of brevity. Importantly, I can respect a difference of opinion. I will not harangue, rather, I will elicit one of my perspectives as dialogue.

Outlawing abortion is another major advance toward outlawing our American freedoms. Americans are currently experiencing unprecedented freedom restrictions under the Patriot Act and other less-characterized laws. For example, it is currently legal to be imprisoned indefinitely without a warrant, have our phone conversations tapped and our mail opened, have our bank records monitored, and even have our houses searched without a warrant. At the same rate, when our "leaders" speak publicly, protestors are restricted to "Free Speech Zones" (oxymoron alert!), which are sometimes placed blocks away from the speaker's location. And all of this is tolerated in the name of security.

This includes the latest attack on our freedom, South Dakota's abortion ban. In eyes of the anti-choice individual, "The unborn are now safe from abortion and have been granted the freedom of a human citizen". Biology aside (which I admit is difficult for me), freedoms have simply transferred, not increased. A fetus will now indeed be granted the freedom to mature in South Dakota (assuming it even can mature in the case of incest). But once that fetus matures and is born as an infant, there will now be two people with restricted freedoms instead of one. There will be little freedom for the new mother and child, as both will not find much help from our bankrupt social services system. A vast number of abortions are performed because the mother is too poor, too uneducated, too young, too sick, or too unstable to raise a child properly. The result from these women delivering children will burden primarily mother and child, followed by the public, thereby further limiting everyone's freedoms. Obviously, the ideal solution is to prevent these pregnancies from happening in the first place. But power begets freedom. And when one is born without power (e.g. poor and uneducated), one is likely to grow up without the power. This is the system that maintains the freedom of powerful people -- such as the people voting to outlaw abortion in South Dakota. Hence, the social service system will be burdened even more by eliminating abortions. This increases the crime rate, including rape and prostitution, and the cycle repeats exponentially, leaving everyone less secure. How ironical.

For the cause of preserving the freedoms of every American citizen, especially that of the mother, I reject any attempts to outlaw abortion in the United States. If you reject the South Dakota law, there are many ways your voice can be heard, one of which is by hitting South Dakota where it would hurt most: tourism. Send your intents to boycott visiting South Dakota by contacting the Secretary of the Department of Tourism and State Development, James Hagan, and the Director of the Office of Tourism, Billie Joe Waara, via e-mail at: sdinfo@state.sd.us