Republican Gov. Haley Barbour said Wednesday that he would likely sign a bill to ban most abortions in Mississippi if it's approved by lawmakers. The state already has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation. The bill that passed the House Public Health Committee on Tuesday would allow abortion only to save the pregnant woman's life. It would make no exception in cases of rape or incest. South Dakota lawmakers passed a similar bill last week that was intended to provoke a court showdown over the legality of abortion.
Responding to questions about whether he'd sign a bill with no exceptions for rape or incest, Barbour said: "It hasn't gotten to my desk yet. When one gets there, we'll find out, and I suspect I'll sign it. But I would certainly rather it come to my desk with an exception for rape and incest. I think that's consistent with the opinion of the vast majority of Mississippians and Americans."
The bill goes to the full House, which could vote next week, and then to the Senate. The Mississippi lawmaker who introduced the near-ban, Democrat Steve Holland, said he acted because he was tired of piecemeal attempts to add new abortion restrictions year after year....
The bill that in fact passed wasn't quite this draconian; it allows abortion in the cases of rape and incest. Which, I suspect, means that it stands a far greater chance of surviving a court challenge than does South Dakota's law.
The States: Mississippi Churning
Newsweek
March 20, 2006 issue
When "Jane" discovered a few weeks ago that she was pregnant, she nearly collapsed. She already has four kids, ages 6 to 18, to raise on her own, while working full-time as a housekeeper. "I'm struggling trying to take care of them," said the 33-year-old Vicksburg, Miss., native, who gave a fictitious name to protect her privacy. "I'm not financially able" to handle a fifth child. So she turned to what had always been, for her, an unthinkable and morally repugnant option: abortion. On her way in to the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Mississippi last week, anti-abortion protesters descended on her, imploring her not to "murder" her unborn baby. "It isn't that we're selfish, heartless people," she said once inside, her eyes brimming with tears. "When you have that baby, those people aren't going to be around to pay for Pampers or day care."
Her right to have the procedure, however, appears more imperiled than ever. For years, Mississippi anti-abortion activists have sought to shut down the Jackson clinic, the only remaining facility of its kind in the state. With their legislative allies, they've succeeded in passing some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, including a 24-hour waiting period and a requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents. Now the Mississippi Legislature is considering a bill that would ban all abortions except in cases of rape, incest or a life-threatening condition for the mother. Yet even some of Mississippi's right-to-life forces have started to wonder whether things are moving too fast—mirroring a strategic debate now raging among anti-abortion conservatives nationwide. "At this point, it's a little bit of a runaway train," says Terri Herring, president of Pro-Life Mississippi, who fears that the ban could backfire—and lead to a reaffirmation of Roe v. Wade....
The GOP's Abortion Anxiety
By Howard Fineman and Evan Thomas
Newsweek
March 20, 2006 issue - When South Dakota approved a law sharply restricting abortion last week, many pro-life Republicans around the country sounded a loud hallelujah. But at least one very senior Republican did not seem at all eager to join in the chorus. As Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, flew to Memphis to attend the first gathering of potential GOP presidential candidates for 2008, a NEWSWEEK reporter asked him if he had anything to say about the South Dakota law. "No," he said. Did he plan to make a statement on that topic at the Republican gathering in Memphis? "No" was the answer. Would he ever be willing to comment on the topic, other than to say that it's up to the states to make their own choices on abortion? Again, the answer was "no." The look on his face was more expressive. It appeared to ask, "Are you kidding?"
[...] [GOP leaders] may be in the awkward position of getting more than they asked for. The South Dakota law, for instance, would allow abortions only to save the life of the mother, not in cases of rape or incest. That is further than most Americans want to go. By a roughly two-to-one margin, polls show, people want to uphold the basic abortion right enshrined in Roe v. Wade, even if they approve of some restrictions, like parental notification. "I'm pro-life, but you can't wear the thing out," says Clarke Reed, the legendary architect of the GOP in Mississippi. "I'm worried about it." With reason: his own state legislature is moving in a direction similar to South Dakota's. "Republicans are going to be the ones who look like extremists," says former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who lost his seat in 2004 after being beaten up on the abortion issue for years. That does not mean, however, that Democrats are rushing to call attention to the Republicans' dilemma. In the upcoming midterm elections, the Democrats don't plan to spend a dime on ads highlighting the abortion issue, according to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the savvy Chicago pol who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He wouldn't spell out the reasons, but a top party staffer (who declined to be quoted out of deference to his bosses) told NEWSWEEK: "These guys are gun-shy because they're used to getting clobbered on the issue."
Indeed, the Democrats are going through some soul-searching of their own over abortion. Four years ago, says Kristen Day, the executive director of Democrats for Life, she couldn't get other Democrats to return her phone calls. But today, a prominent pro-lifer, Bob Casey, is running for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania. The Democrats' rising star, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, prefers to cast abortion in terms of parental responsibility. "Even as we defend this right," he says, "it's important for us to acknowledge the moral dimension to the choice that's made." [...]
Honestly, I don't think that Republicans have that much to worry about, unless the Democrats come up with someone who can, as Obama notes, "acknowledge the moral dimension to the choice that's made" in a way that works politically. They're so afraid of seeming in favor of sexual liberty that they're not going to resurrect Clinton's "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare" statement, because implementing that means that you need to provide sexuality education other than "Just say no, mm'K?" And despite the fact that poll after poll indicates that the American public as a whole seems to want comprehensive sexuality and birth control education in the schools for their children, the fact remains that year after year, the American public sends to their state legislatures and to Congress people who regularly and religiously pass laws designed to keep their children ignorant of these things. To say that the American public's behavior on this issue is hypocritical in the extreme would be putting it mildly. Unfortunately, this seems to be a particularly pointed case of studies being contaminated by social desirability bias.
We know that "just say no" works even worse with sex than it does with drugs -- after all, you don't really have to spend money to have sex, do you? At the same time, people want their actual children to say no to sex, even as they know it won't work. (After all, they likely didn't say no to sex themselves.) And given that teenagers have little education about sex or sexuality, and what they have is incomplete, this leads to teen pregnancy (as well as a truly appalling rate of teenagers with sexually transmitted diseases). But there is no Democrat out there willing to articulate this position, and no Republican who needs to. Thus, unless there's a serious string of states enacting absolute abortion bans before the next election, the Republicans really don't have much to worry about.
Honestly, I don't even think that the GOP needs to worry much even if a long string of states follows South Dakota or Mississippi. After all, if this is what the legislatures are voting for, then this is what the people want, right? After all, they aren't throwing the bastards out when they vote, so this, clearly, isn't a make or break issue for anyone.
Unfortunately.
Posted by iain at March 13, 2006 11:21 AM
