Reading: The competition to re-enter the Middle Ages first

America has produced a generation of adults--both women and men, pro-choice and anti-abortion--who are spoiled by the intellectual comfort of not having to think through what Roe v. Wade really means for their lives.

That party is about to end.

The blogworld has been alive with this for the last week, but I'm going to go with Saint Molly:

The state legislature of South Dakota, in all its wisdom and majesty, a legislature comprised of sons and daughters of the soil from Aberdeen to Zell, have usurped the right of the women of that state to decide whether or not to bear the child of an unwanted pregnancy. They will decide. Women will do what they decide. [ . . . ]

In South Dakota, pharmacists can refuse to fill a prescription for contraceptives should it trouble their conscience, and some groups who worked on the anti-abortion bill believe contraception also needs to be outlawed. Good plan. After that, we'll reconsider women's property rights, civil right and voting rights.

For years, the women's movement has been going around asking, "Who decides?" as though that were the issue. Well, here's the answer. [SD state senator] Bill Napoli decides, and if you're not happy with that arrangement, well, you'd better be prepared to do something about it.

(If you've made it this far and haven't been introduced to Napoli, one of the finest minds of the 14th century, go here. If you don't want to read all the way through the transcript, go here for the punchline, straight up, no chaser. Who the hell sits around imagining scenarios like this?)

The whole article is going to the Readings list in the side bar.

And while we're at it, here are three items--beyond the obvious (i.e., that women are chattel)--which seem to follow logically from South Dakota-style thinking, although the coat hanger enthusiasts seem to have overlooked it:

1. The burning building problem. If fertilized eggs really are the moral equivalent of fully developed--and actually born--persons, exactly how far are we willing to go to protect them?


2. The laddie-boy problem. Courtesy of Jane Hamsher at firedoglake, who shared this email from Digby:

   I just realized that those nuts in South Dakota might be having an unanticipated effect. I am working today and this guy said to me over lunch, "I can't believe that these people are really serious." He's a bit of a putz and he admitted that he'd believed women were exaggerating the threat. I said "I hope you're ready to be daddies, boys. Last time abortion was illegal they didn't have DNA testing" and they all looked stunned.

3. The don’t-call-it-murder-then-try-to-weasel-out problem. Digby points out that a lot of those "abortion is murder" sign-wavers haven't really thought through what that means.

And South Dakota is just first in line.

(Image from EKO, commenter at DailyKOS.)