The American Civil Liberties Union is castigating the South Dakota House of Representatives for its vote last month to ban virtually all abortions within the state.
Leading with a masterpiece of misdirection, Jennifer Ring, executive director of the ACLU of the Dakotas, called the new legislation: “another unconstitutional attack on reproductive health care.” But how can a law “attack” reproductive health when it’s designed to save a child’s life? Isn’t protecting both the reproducer (mom) and the object of reproduction (baby) what “reproductive health care” is all about?
Not according to Ms. Ring.
“The legislature should concentrate its efforts on preventing unintended pregnancies and providing services for women who want to bear their children,” she says, “rather than deciding that women cannot be trusted to make this most intimate of decisions.”
One might infer from that statement that the ACLU has developed a new appreciation for what crisis pregnancy centers are doing all over the country to help young women bring their babies to term. But no; just last March the New York ACLU supported federal legislation to censor advertising by crisis pregnancy centers – simply because those centers do not endorse abortion.
Ironically, the same ACLU that works to gag those who might help pregnant mothers in New York, is now accusing South Dakota legislators of “playing politics with women’s health.”
An outraged Louise Melling, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project (there’s a lovely piece of Orwellian double-speak – “reproductive freedom” here meaning not the freedom to reproduce, but the license to escape the responsibilities of reproduction) said: “Families, not politicians, should make these very personal health care decisions. . . .”
Ring-around-the-rosie again. Is this the same ACLU that has ardently opposed parental notification laws, thereby ensuring that families will be excluded from these critical decisions?
Ah, but it goes on. These same ACLU attorneys denounced the South Dakota legislators for ignoring the will of a majority of their state’s voters, who came out 55.5 percent to 44.5 percent against an almost-identical abortion ban in a statewide election in November. But it’s that “almost-identical” distinction on which the ACLU’s logic “all falls down.”
In fact, last year’s proposed abortion ban did not die because 55.5 percent of South Dakota voters supported the ACLU’s beloved notion of abortion-on-demand, but because the state’s pro-life majority dithered over the lack of an express “rape and incest” provision in the referendum. By including that exception this time, legislators give every evidence of listening to their constituents – not ignoring them.
Even if that weren’t the case, the accusation that these legislators are “playing politics” is laughable. True, politicians, by definition, tend to “play politics.” But if that’s what the South Dakota House is doing … well, their legislators aren’t very good at the game. If anything, it’s the antithesis of good politics to deliberately re-create legislation that your electorate has just soundly defeated.
What really worries the ACLU is the fact that the South Dakota representatives are not playing politics. Politicians, their attorneys can handle; statesmen are harder to get a grip on.
The truth is Ms. Melling and her allies have no problem at all with these legislators playing politics – as long as it’s the child in the womb who’s expendable.
And so it goes—the ACLU claims to support pregnancy care, yet attacks crisis pregnancy centers. It demands “family involvement” with these intimate decisions, while litigating its heart out to obstruct parental notification laws. It decries unintended pregnancies, while egging on pornographers, undercutting marriage, and attacking abstinence education.
“Unintended” pregnancy isn’t a virus, passed from one person to another. Rather, it usually derives from a lack of self-control and a certain disregard for the natural consequences of personal intimacy – both of which abound in ACLU’s Hefneresque American fantasy land of endless sexual opportunity devoid of sexual responsibility.
That so many elected leaders of South Dakota decline to buy into that image is a tribute to their remarkable ability, in this increasingly wanton age, to value human life above sexual liberty … and to recognize that the people who count most in their constituency are not those who can vote for them – but those who can’t.
That’s not playing politics; it’s an Emancipation Proclamation for the unborn.
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Gary McCaleb is Senior Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund.
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