The Eclipse of Reason

On Tuesday morning the group fighting the abortion ban in South Dakota will turn in the petitions they’ve been gathering for the past couple of months. It looks like there should be plenty of signatures! This means that the abortion ban will NOT go into effect, and that it will appear on the ballot this November.

This is a huge victory.

I think this is such a great way of fighting these crazies---Let them introduce stupid laws and then watch the people vote them out of existence. Perfect. It tells the politicians that people don’t like legislation written by religious extremists.

For those who don’t know, the bill is HB1215 and it was created by crazy rightwingers in the SD Senate and then signed by Governor Mike Rounds. The law would ban abortion in all cases—no provision for cases of rape or incest, and not even a provision to allow abortions when the mother’s life is in danger.

IT’S CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!

This is the draconian law that the religious right want to see go into effect all across the country. But if we can stop it in South Dakota it should then be easier to stop it in other states.

At first I was skeptical about whether or not the people of South Dakota would overturn the law, but now I’m sure we can win this thing. There was a great article in the NYTimes a few months ago that interviewed lots of hardcore conservatives who were opposed to the ban because it was just another example of the government reaching into the lives of ordinary people. I think the fiery independence of this part of the country will spell the end of HB1215.

The group collecting the signatures is South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families and they’re working with Focus South Dakota (who has had an ad up for a few weeks now). I think we really need to show these groups that we appreciate what they’re doing. I’m going to click through and drop them some money.

This is going to be a huge battle this November. I think it hasn’t received a lot of press yet because it’s not on the ballot yet. But after Tuesday more and more people are going to start paying attention.

And that means that all the wacko-christofacist groups will start pouring millions of dollars into South Dakota. It’s a small state and every dollar will make a difference. Let’s stop it in SD before it gets to Ohio, then Tennessee, then Texas, then Arizona, then North Carolina, then Indiana, then….

UPDATE: Sorry I forgot the website for Focus.

www.focussouthdakota.org

# posted by rsantos @ 4:55 PM