Posted on 02/28/2006 6:36:43 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
US President George W. Bush signalled his opposition to a South Dakota abortion ban that forbids the procedure even in cases of rape or incest, saying he favors such exceptions.
But Bush declined to predict the outcome of any legal challenges to the legislation, which would make it illegal to terminate a pregnancy except in rare cases when it may be necessary to save the life of the mother.
"That, of course, is a state law, but my position has always been three exceptions: Rape, incest, and the life of the mother," the US president told ABC news in an interview.
Asked whether he would include "health" of the mother, Bush replied: "I said life of the mother, and health is a very vague term, but my position has been clear on that ever since I started running for office."
The bill, which recently gained final approval from South Dakota's House of Representatives, directly contradicts the precedent set in 1973 when the US Supreme Court ruled that bans on abortion violate a woman's constitutional right to privacy.
The bill grants no allowances for women who have been raped or are victims of incest. Doctors who perform abortion would be charged with a crime. It also prohibits the sale of emergency contraception and asserts that life begins at fertilization.
The governor of South Dakota has indicated he is likely to sign the bill.
A leading pro-choice advocacy group has already vowed to challenge the ban in federal court. But that seems to be exactly what many promoters of the legislation seek.
Advocates of the ban do not deny they aim much higher than South Dakota, a rural and socially conservative state, which even today has only one abortion clinic.
Instead, they are hoping the bill will offer a full frontal assault on legal abortions now that the balance of power in the Supreme Court appears to have shifted with the confirmation of conservative jurists John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both of whom are seen as pro-life.
It is a democracy, the best money can buy.
Peach and Hildy supporting abortion, I'm shocked, shocked!!!
Are you kidding me?! Even with the best healthcare on the planet, pregnant women die - where exactly do you live?
Of course, even though such a law would be wildly inconsistent. But in politics, you have to be pragmatic and take what you can get, even if what you get has absurd contradictions like this.
You try carrying a baby for nine months. We won't get into what it does to your body...we won't even get into the social stigma and the family dramas. We won't go into how unbelievably life-altering this would be. And all this to the VICTIM of the crime. If you dare say it will build character, I sware I will find out where you live and come and smack you.
Maybe because a first trimester fetus isn't a child.
If your argument is down to "you can't possibly understand (abortion) because you're a man", well... FReepers are better debaters than that, don't you agree?
If it is OK to abort in such a circumstance, why is it not OK in other circumstances?
Either the unborn baby is human, or it is not.
Get lost, creep.
I doubt it. Most of his base are willing to accept these exceptions for an abortion. And I do believe that as long as these exceptions are left out of a state law, Roe is safe.
Perhaps, but murdering a child for his father's crime is downright barbaric.
Nothing...and what has the woman done to deserve her life being ruined?
The art of poltics, unfortunately, is compromise - we "accept" a certain number of traffic fatalities every year as a society - more than would ever be aborted from rape and incest.
Killing a child because his father was a criminal seems pretty barbarian.
The "base" is not monolithic on this issue. Read the polls. A majority of registered Republicans, or close to it, would favor legalized abortion in the first trimester, as do I. In California, it is over 60% of registered Republicans.
Yes, it is indeed a tough issue, but I would say yes. Otherwise, then we are saying that some lives are worth more than others. Another issue is that if you charge the doctors with murder, then you would have to charge the would-be mother with accessory to murder....
Should the sentence for abortion be any different than the sentence for murdering someone who has been born?
You mean, rotting in jail for the rest of their lives at taxpayer expense?!?
How much you wanna bet we're the only women on this board?
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