A Loophole In The South Dakota Abortion Bill
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Abortion, LawApparently I was wrong in my previous comment on the South Dakota abortion post. I said that a woman couldn’t take the morning after pill. Well, they can according to the new law, but only up to five days.
After that they’re murderers.
From Slate:
Section 3, however, tells a different story: “Nothing in section 2 of this Act may be construed to prohibit the sale, use, prescription, or administration of a contraceptive measure, drug or chemical, if it is administered prior to the time when a pregnancy could be determined through conventional medical testing.”Look at that language carefully. It doesn’t just say you can take a contraceptive drug before sex. It says you can take such a drug after sex, as long as it’s before conventional tests can detect a pregnancy.
Conventional tests can’t detect a pregnancy at fertilization. They detect hormonal changes at implantation, which begins around the fifth day after fertilization and can take another week to complete.
In other words, South Dakota gives you five days to kill what it calls your unborn child.
Something tells me the morning after pill is going to become extremely popular in South Dakota. And quick.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 and is filed under Abortion, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 9th, 2006 at 3:10 am
Sully raises an excellent point. He says the South Dakota abortion-outlaw bill is a miscalculation “because it changes the subject to how exactly criminalizing abortion will be enforced. The pro-life activists don’t want to go there yet, because it alienates a lot of people. But if we’re going to go there at some point, why not discuss it now?”
Why not, indeed? It wasn’t slavery that made the North turn against the South. It was the Fugitive Slave Law, which forced their local law enforcement to intervene on behalf of the masters to capture runaways.
March 9th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Just a couple of notes, Justin:
Of course, the law does not make anybody a “murderer”.
Abortion has been impossible in South Dakota for a long time: There is no abortion provider in the state, and I don’t believe there has been one for 20 years or so. So the popularity of morning-after pills (however popular those are) will remain unchanged.
This bill won’t shut down a single abortion clinic – not one. For my part, though, I hope it shuts down Roe V. Wade.
NARAL, get your lawyers off their butts and let’s go to court!
March 9th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Correction: I was mistaken in the last post. There is currently one abortion provider in South Dakota, in Sioux Falls.
For many years there was no provider, after the departure of Dr. Benjamin Munson. Munson was the sole provider since 1973. He allegedly provided illegal abortions before Roe.
In 1977, a South Dakota woman named Linda Padfield died after a botched abortion in which most of the fetus was left inside of her, causing an infection. Munson was tried for manslaughter but was acquitted because there was no intent to kill. The case had a big effect on how people in SD view abortion.
March 9th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
and available at your local walmart
April 4th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
There are four out of state doctors that alternate coming in once a week to Sioux Falls to perform abortions. Part of the reason that the morning after pill is not very popular is that many of the hospitals, particularly in the SE part of the state, are run by Benedictine Catholics and the monastaries connected with them. For some reasons the Catholics don’t want to let people know that the morning after pill is an option…could it be because they are forcing their religion on others…?
April 5th, 2006 at 12:45 am
Hmm…could be…
April 5th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Seems to me that the world can’t stop blaming eachother for being messed up. Dog eat Dog world out there. Anyways abortions are wrong. I mean my god your mom brought you into this world, she could have killed you just as well think!
April 5th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Anna-
Could it be that others don’t think the same way you do? And this to all anti-abortionists.
April 6th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
No its not that. Its self conceded people can’t open up there minds a little.
April 17th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
I wonder how Glen Wishard feels about doctors who botch other surgeries!? Lots of people die during heart surgery, too. Glen, should heart surgery be banned? Is it an abomination?
August 4th, 2006 at 11:37 am
FYI from South Dakota-all SD hospitals give information on the Morning After pill and There are Walmarts in Spearfish, Rapid City, Mitchell and two in Sioux Falls. They all provide this drug. Most folks can get this information fairly easily.
February 5th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Glen, Munson also sent Yvonne Mesteth home to die from sepsis after her abortion as well.
February 5th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Alex, Munson sent Linda Padfield home with a mutilated five-month fetus still rotting in her body. The man went to medical school. You’d think he could count — TWO arms, TWO legs. He pulled out ONE arm, ONE leg, a piece of skull, and a piece of torso. You’d think that he’d have had a clue that maybe he hadn’t gotten it all.
But I guess the prochoice spin is “It’s better than a rusty coathanger.”