I can't believe the South Dakota governor signed this horrible law. Are those legislators really saying that a rape victim who is five weeks along should be forced to carry her pregnancy to term? That a woman whose baby is found to be horribly deformed and won't live past birth should risk her future fertility and mental health to continue the pregnancy? That a young incest survivor should be forced to bear her own half-sister or -brother? Or, indeed, that a woman whose birth control fails should be given the "punishment" of a baby to care for?
Here's what I sent to Herr Governor Rounds (R):
"I certainly recognize the multiplicity of views on the question of abortion. However, the bottom line remains that if a woman cannot control when and if she has a child, she cannot control any other aspect of her life.
When pregnancy happens for the right reasons, it is a joyous, miraculous event. When it happens for the wrong reasons, it is devastating. The fact is that unplanned pregnancies happen for all kinds of reasons. Birth control fails. Women are raped. Teenagers and young girls are molested. And sometimes even the most wanted pregnancies go terribly wrong. Fetuses can have gross abnormalities that can result in damage to the health and future fertility of the mother.
What South Dakota has implemented is no less than a policy of forced fertility, no different from the single-child policy enforced in China. If a government can tell its citizens when they *must* go through with an unwanted or hopeless pregnancy, then it can just as easily begin to decide which of its citizens *cannot* bear children.
As a mother of a young son and a survivor of a painful miscarriage, I would never presume to know what is in a woman's heart when she makes her choice about whether to have a child. That is between her, her doctor, and her god. The government has no business in that space. As a man, you should be ashamed of yourself for putting into law something you will never have to experience personally."