Sensible showdown

by Jayne Lady, DI editorial writer

The South Dakota total ban on abortion makes perfect sense.

Well, it doesn't make sense to me, personally: I'm pro-choice and believe that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. But from an anti-abortion perspective, it all adds up. If you oppose abortion, presumably it's because you believe life begins at conception and that aborting an embryo or fetus is the moral equivalent of murdering a living person.

So, if abortion is murder, why is it not murder if the woman was raped or her health is threatened? I've never understood how anti-abortion advocates can be satisfied with any exceptions. How do you get one "crime" (abortion) and another crime to cancel each other out? South Dakota's hard-line stance against pregnancy termination is the only morally defensible position for those on the anti-abortion side.

The coming confrontation over South Dakota's challenge to Roe v. Wade will actually be helpful to the pro-choice cause, because once the courts re-affirm the legal precedent, there will be no more splitting hairs - and no more creeping encroachment on women's right to control their bodies.