Bill Napoli, the South Dakota legislator who sponsored the state's
Rapist's Rights Bill, claims that a human embryo is a "person", which is "totally unique immediately at fertilization." His bill, signed now by the Governor and supported by Republicans like
John McCain, Mitt Romey, and George Allen, is meant to "fully protect...the rights, interest, and life of [an] unborn child." An embryo,
no matter how many cells it has, deserves just as much protection as a newborn baby, they say. Thus, the bill makes abortion a crime. It makes the "termination of the life of an unborn being" a....a....
Class 5 felony.
A Class 5 felony, folks. If you want evidence of their hypocrisy, you need look no further than that clause in the bill. For if the bill's supporters truly believed abortion is murder, why didn't they make abortion a Class A or B felony (as "murder" is classified in the South Dakota code)? If they believe that at the moment of an inception that little cluster of cells has just as many rights as a full-fledged human being, why the hypocrisy? Let's look at what else classifies as a Class 5 felony in South Dakota to see just how much Napoli, McCain and others believe abortion is "murder." Convicted of four DUIs? Get caught setting up a second internet gambling site? Place a bug on someone's phone line? Posses a half pound of marijuana? That's what South Dakota thinks a Class 5 felony is about. And it's in that company that they place abortion, which they claim is the killing of a unique "human being."
More below...
Now, just to make things clear, South Dakota classifies the unlawful killing an unborn child as "fetal homicide", a Class B felony (S.D. Codified Laws Ann. § 22-16-1.1 22-16-1.1). So if a husband, knowing his wife is a few weeks pregnant, beats her up and causes her to miscarry, he's guilty of fetal homicide, a Class B felony punishable with a very, very long time in jail. Yet if a doctor performs an abortion, he gets a maximum of five years in prison. So the question for Nagoli and McCain and the rest of the bill's supporters is why do they maintain disparate values on "human life"? Why is an embryo more "precious" in the first instance and not in the second? Why don't they put their values where their mouth is and simply make abortion "fetal homicide"? And while we're at it, why didn't the bill's supporters punish a woman who seeks an abortion? Shit, if they
really think abortion is
murder, wouldn't asking for an abortion be solicitation for murder? If a woman asks for and gets an abortion, isn't she an accessory to murder? But the bill's supporters don't mention punishment for a woman who seeks to exercise control over her own body. Why? Because they know their position is fundamentally wrong.
In their heart of hearts, they know that an embryo is not human life; it's not the same as a two-year old child or an adult. They are hypocrites with murky values who want to present themselves as "staunchly pro-life." In reality, their position produces inconsistent, illogical results. It's a world where protection of "life" varies depending on who causes the termination. It's a world where abortion is a sin unless it's your teenage daughter who is knocked up, or your little girl who was raped. It's a world where they seek to place a baby's smiling face on every blastulae but refuse to follow their claims to the logical conclusion of classifying termination of that blastulae as murder. Incongruous convictions, indeed.