A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl, could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life – State Senator Bill Napoli, R-Rapid City (South Dakota)

The demagogues are at it again. Taking advantage of the recently realigned Supreme Court, the South Dakota legislature has made it a felony to perform an abortion in their state. They offer very few exceptions, the only two being either when the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother or when it involves a scenario such as the one above, envisioned by Senator Napoli. While disappointing, it is hardly surprising to see a state finally pass such a bill. Although the main point is, of course, to outlaw abortion, the bill was put forth as much for the sake of getting challenged as for actually being enshrined in law. Opponents of the proposed legislation see it as a volley for President Bush and his revamped Supreme Court to spike in the face of Roe v. Wade.

It seems likely this bill, drafted as a test case, will catch the attention of the courts - a reason to make its writers confident. (Planned Parenthood has announced that it will challenge the law). With an anonymous donor already providing one million dollars to be used for the proponents’ court costs, this law signals the beginning of the legal assault against Roe v. Wade. In fact, it was so designed. Governor Mike Rounds, an opponent of abortion, vetoed a similar 2004 measure because that bill’s wording would have caused all previous abortion restrictions to be suspended while the bill was appealed in court. This time, it seems, somebody finally got it right.

What is truly shocking about this power grab is the religious intimation of Senator Napoli’s language. His comments suggest that this is a religiously and not ethically motivated law, which is simply unacceptable. Regardless of what self-serving preachers and greedy politicians like to tell us, America was founded on the principles of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. Religious freedom implies freedom FROM religion as well as freedom for religion. While the need for exemption from such an abortion law is understandable, such a polarized, complex issue would prove impossible to view on a case-by-case basis. Would Napoli have us believe it appropriate to grant an “abortion exemption” to somebody who is religious over somebody who has no religious belief? The exemption process would have to run through the state government, subsequently setting up a state-sponsored endorsement of religion. Even if no specific religion is endorsed over others – although I can very well guess at which religion Senator Napoli has in mind – this is a complete violation of the rights of non-religious people.

Moreover, the gross violation of women’s rights affected by the passage of this bill remains an enormous issue yet unresolved. If we believe a woman’s body is her own, why is it that male legislators hold the strongest convictions, urging women to submit to others’ judgments when it comes to private matters? If terminally ill patients can commit suicide by refusing treatment, why are pregnant women denied a parallel right to decide what to do with their own bodies? The Latin origin of the word rape, a word Senator Napoli by his aforementioned quote seems to be an authority on, is rapeo, -ere, meaning to seize, destroy, or abduct. Isn’t this precisely what the South Dakota state legislature is doing to women’s rights?

Furthermore we have stuck our hands in the delicate right to privacy issue. In determining who would be eligible for his exemptions, Senator Napoli would be exposing women, some the victims of violence, to further anxiety and humiliation as their cases are closely examined by courts in order to determine if they are subjectively “virginal” enough for an exemption. That is the sort of public ordeal convicted felons go through! Who would find it reasonable to subject women unfortunate enough to have an unwanted pregnancy – an incredibly traumatic experience in and of itself – to something like that?

Bills like these, which seek to introduce the antiquated ideas of select groups of people into general society and impose their mandates on others against their will have no place in a rational, enlightened, secular, modernity. Not only are they assaults on formalized individual freedoms, but they attack the progress towards true freedo made in the course of United States history. I feel that Henry Drummond, the Clarence Darrow character from the Scopes Monkey Trial movie Inherit the Wind summed up this argument best. “…[I]f you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools [.] And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, we'll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!”