Moldy Peaches

How are you celebrating International Women's Week? If you’re Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota, you have a funny way of showing your appreciation for females in your state. Happy IWW, please check your rights at the door.

Rounds today signed legislation banning almost all abortions in South Dakota. Hey Rounds, the 1970's called and their want their disco record back.

The Legislature passed the ban late last month, focusing nationwide interest on the state (for the second time in history), but now the Governor simply made it official.

The law, designed to raise a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, is scheduled to take effect July 1. The law states that anyone who performs an abortion under any other circumstance -- even in a case of rape or incest -- can be charged with a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

State Senator Bill Napoli (the video is from PBS and is almost hard to believe it is 2006) believes that South Dakota could pave the way on this issue for the rest of the country. Napoli does, however, see one case where abortion would be ok:

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.

I think we have a new slogan for the state. South Dakota: Protecting Religious Virgins since 2006.

Napoli also talks openly about a return to traditional values:

When I was growing up here in the wild west and a guy got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married and the whole darn neighbourhood was involved in that wedding. You just didn’t allow that sort of thing to happen. They wanted that child to be brought up in a home with two parents in a home. You know that whole story and I happen to believe that can happen again.

The Governor's decision has to be one of the most ridiculous things to come out of South Dakota since well... this. The insult to injury is that it was signed during International Women's Week. This would be akin to stripping war veterans of their rights during veteran’s week or on Remembrance Day.

Those wanting to share their thoughts on the matter can do so with Gov. Rounds

He also can be reached by mail:

Office of the Governor
500 E. Capitol Ave.
Pierre, SD
57501

Or by phone:

605.773.3212