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timepiececlockA few of the flist expressed interest in reading my final news story for my Journalism class, the topic of which was the South Dakota ban on abortions.
Because I wasn't able to secure anyone for an in-person interview I had to rely on press statements, so I'm not sure I did anything to "advance the story" as my prof called it. Still, I'm pretty pleased overall, and I ran it by a friend who is the founder and editor of our school's progressive newspaper, and he only found one grammatical error and one suggested word-change, so I'm hoping that's a good sign for my future grades. If anything, it means I seem to have been a really good speller this morning.
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FINAL STORY
South Dakota legislators have lobbed the first cannonball in what might be a U.S. Supreme Court battle over a woman's right to medical abortion services. On March 6th Governor Mike Rounds (R) signed into law the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act, which criminalizes abortion procedures in the state of South Dakota. The bill passed in the House with a vote of 50-18 and the Senate by 23-12. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) Senior Staff Attorney Eve Gartner calls it "the most sweeping abortion ban passed by any state in more than a decade," since the 1992 Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.
Scheduled to take effect on July 1st unless it is suspended by a federal judge, the new law designates a Class 5 felony any act by a person that "knowingly uses or employs any instrument or procedure upon a pregnant woman with the specific intent of causing or abetting the termination of the life of an unborn human being." Under the law, doctors and other health care professionals could be sentenced to up to five years in prison for performing an illegal abortion.
The act goes on to define an unborn human as an individual " throughout the entire embryonic and fetal ages of the unborn child from fertilization to full gestation and childbirth." It provides a legal exception for cases where the life of the mother is at stake. However, it does not provide exceptions for rape or incest, a decision which has some anti-abortion conservatives questioning the law's ability to survive a court battle.
A court battle is the professed goal of the new law: South Dakota conservative legislators hope the ban will be accepted by the U. S. Supreme Court for constitutional review. Ten other states have similar total-abortion legislation currently pending. Some states, including South Dakota, have a "trigger bill" already in place that is set to activate if 1973's landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade is ever overturned.
Planned Parenthood has publicly promised to fight the South Dakota abortion ban in court. Sarah Stoesz, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota , and South Dakota , has declared "We will not abandon the women of South Dakota." She says, "Governor Rounds criminalized health care for women in South Dakota. Outlawing health care for women goes against the basic values of South Dakotans, the vast majority of whom support access to legal abortion. Planned Parenthood will challenge this law in order to protect the health and rights of the women and families we serve."
National and state anti-abortion political groups hope that with President Bush's appointment of two conservative judges to the Supreme Court in 2005 the court will be more likely to hear the case and more likely to overturn Roe v. Wade. Justice Samuel Alito is known for giving negative views on abortion in the past, but both he and Justice John Roberts professed to be adherents stare decisis, the rule of following precendent, when they were approved by the U.S. Senate. Roe v. Wade's status as legal precendent has been diminished by increments in the thirty-three years since Roe as cases were brought to the court to challenge abortion indirectly, resulting in approval of state laws that include mandatory counselling before an abortion and parental consent requirements for underage mothers.
Both such laws are already in place in South Dakota. With a population of 760,000 residents, the state has only one clinic that provides abortion procedures: the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Sioux Falls, which provides services to women of South Dakota and neighboring states. Approximately 800 abortions a year are performed in South Dakota.
According to the PPFA website, "A 2001 survey of U.S. abortion providers found that among women who have non-hospital abortions, approximately 16 percent travel 50 to 100 miles for services, and an additional eight percent travel more than 100 miles." If South Dakota's effort is successful in overturning Roe, women of states that ban abortions would be forced to travel hundreds of miles to locate a clinic, an obstacle that would disproportionately impact middle- and lower-income women and families. Several states also make it a crime for an adult to transport a minor over state lines for the purpose of getting an abortion without the parent's permission, regardless of relationship to the minor.
President Bush, when interviewed on ABC News, approved of the intention behind the South Dakota ban, but disapproved of its single exception rule. Stating his belief that exceptions should also be provided for rape and incest, Bush said, "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." President Bush did not state specifically whether he opposed or supported the ban.
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I was not able to get an in-person interview, so I used a combination of press statements and text of the SD law to serve instead.
Citation:
-press statement: http://www.ppmns.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=gwKTJaN0JyF&b=303759&ct=2037901
-law: http://legis.state.sd.us/sessions/2006/bills/HB1215SST.htm
-census/population: http://www.areaconnect.com/population.htm?s=SD
-PPFA numbers: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/abortion/fact-abortion-first-trimestert.xml
The above is not a complete list of my sources, but it's a list of the technical stuff I cited.
EDIT: Got a "B". Blegh.
Because I wasn't able to secure anyone for an in-person interview I had to rely on press statements, so I'm not sure I did anything to "advance the story" as my prof called it. Still, I'm pretty pleased overall, and I ran it by a friend who is the founder and editor of our school's progressive newspaper, and he only found one grammatical error and one suggested word-change, so I'm hoping that's a good sign for my future grades. If anything, it means I seem to have been a really good speller this morning.
-----------------------------
FINAL STORY
South Dakota legislators have lobbed the first cannonball in what might be a U.S. Supreme Court battle over a woman's right to medical abortion services. On March 6th Governor Mike Rounds (R) signed into law the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act, which criminalizes abortion procedures in the state of South Dakota. The bill passed in the House with a vote of 50-18 and the Senate by 23-12. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) Senior Staff Attorney Eve Gartner calls it "the most sweeping abortion ban passed by any state in more than a decade," since the 1992 Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.
Scheduled to take effect on July 1st unless it is suspended by a federal judge, the new law designates a Class 5 felony any act by a person that "knowingly uses or employs any instrument or procedure upon a pregnant woman with the specific intent of causing or abetting the termination of the life of an unborn human being." Under the law, doctors and other health care professionals could be sentenced to up to five years in prison for performing an illegal abortion.
The act goes on to define an unborn human as an individual " throughout the entire embryonic and fetal ages of the unborn child from fertilization to full gestation and childbirth." It provides a legal exception for cases where the life of the mother is at stake. However, it does not provide exceptions for rape or incest, a decision which has some anti-abortion conservatives questioning the law's ability to survive a court battle.
A court battle is the professed goal of the new law: South Dakota conservative legislators hope the ban will be accepted by the U. S. Supreme Court for constitutional review. Ten other states have similar total-abortion legislation currently pending. Some states, including South Dakota, have a "trigger bill" already in place that is set to activate if 1973's landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade is ever overturned.
Planned Parenthood has publicly promised to fight the South Dakota abortion ban in court. Sarah Stoesz, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota , and South Dakota , has declared "We will not abandon the women of South Dakota." She says, "Governor Rounds criminalized health care for women in South Dakota. Outlawing health care for women goes against the basic values of South Dakotans, the vast majority of whom support access to legal abortion. Planned Parenthood will challenge this law in order to protect the health and rights of the women and families we serve."
National and state anti-abortion political groups hope that with President Bush's appointment of two conservative judges to the Supreme Court in 2005 the court will be more likely to hear the case and more likely to overturn Roe v. Wade. Justice Samuel Alito is known for giving negative views on abortion in the past, but both he and Justice John Roberts professed to be adherents stare decisis, the rule of following precendent, when they were approved by the U.S. Senate. Roe v. Wade's status as legal precendent has been diminished by increments in the thirty-three years since Roe as cases were brought to the court to challenge abortion indirectly, resulting in approval of state laws that include mandatory counselling before an abortion and parental consent requirements for underage mothers.
Both such laws are already in place in South Dakota. With a population of 760,000 residents, the state has only one clinic that provides abortion procedures: the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Sioux Falls, which provides services to women of South Dakota and neighboring states. Approximately 800 abortions a year are performed in South Dakota.
According to the PPFA website, "A 2001 survey of U.S. abortion providers found that among women who have non-hospital abortions, approximately 16 percent travel 50 to 100 miles for services, and an additional eight percent travel more than 100 miles." If South Dakota's effort is successful in overturning Roe, women of states that ban abortions would be forced to travel hundreds of miles to locate a clinic, an obstacle that would disproportionately impact middle- and lower-income women and families. Several states also make it a crime for an adult to transport a minor over state lines for the purpose of getting an abortion without the parent's permission, regardless of relationship to the minor.
President Bush, when interviewed on ABC News, approved of the intention behind the South Dakota ban, but disapproved of its single exception rule. Stating his belief that exceptions should also be provided for rape and incest, Bush said, "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." President Bush did not state specifically whether he opposed or supported the ban.
-----------------------------
I was not able to get an in-person interview, so I used a combination of press statements and text of the SD law to serve instead.
Citation:
-press statement: http://www.ppmns.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=gwKTJaN0JyF&b=303759&ct=2037901
-law: http://legis.state.sd.us/sessions/2006/bills/HB1215SST.htm
-census/population: http://www.areaconnect.com/population.htm?s=SD
-PPFA numbers: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/abortion/fact-abortion-first-trimestert.xml
The above is not a complete list of my sources, but it's a list of the technical stuff I cited.
EDIT: Got a "B". Blegh.
