Demagogue

Okay, I realize that headline is pretty over the top, but bear with me -- it will make sense. On the heels of the comic strip about the South Dakota abortion ban that Zoe posted, this post about S.D.'s new law is guaranteed not to produce a giggle.

A friend who supports abortion rights tipped me off to this excerpt from a news segment that PBS's "Newshour" ran earlier this month. The news segment included a bizarre and disturbing excerpt. (NOTE: State Senator Jim Napoli was the chief sponsor of South Dakota's abortion ban.)

From the March 3 "Newshour":

Fred de Sam Lazaro (PBS): "Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls 'convenience.' He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the (South Dakota) provision that protects the mother's life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked."

State Sen. Bill Napoli: "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.

So here's what Napoli is saying:

SCENARIO 1: If you're brutally raped and a virgin, but you're not "religious," then you must carry the pregnancy to term or you've committed a crime.

SCENARIO 2: If you're brutally raped and "religious," but you're not a virgin, then you must carry the pregnancy to term or you've committed a crime.

SCENARIO 3: If you're a virgin and "religious," but you weren't raped and sodomized "as bad as you can possibly make it," then you must carry the pregnancy to term or you've committed a crime.

Of course, Napoli didn't bother to define what he means by "religious," exactly what constitutes a brutal rape, or what lengths he will go to in order to determine whether the female in question is a virgin.

There's something incredibly disgusting about all of this. It reveals that what Napoli finds disturbing about abortion is not so much the alleged taking of a human life, but the fact that someone had sex that wasn't specifically intended to create a baby within a marriage.

One last point. As The Carpetbagger noted yesterday, those who are not religious and/or don't believe in God are loathed by large portions of our society. As proof, consider that Napoli feels quite comfortable telling a reporter that he could make an exception for a woman if she were "religious." And something also tells me that he and his S.D. allies might define "religious" in ways that might not include Muslims, Mormons, Scientologists, Buddhists and other minority religions or denominations.

So much for church-state separation.