Saturday, March 04, 2006
South Dakota Leads us back to the Past
The South Dakota Legislature has passed a bill that outlaws abortion except when necessary to save the life of the woman. The governor says he will sign the bill. Friday evening the PBS television News Hour program aired a segment on the bill, with comments from legislators who favor and who oppose it.
I was particularly incensed at the comments of one of the supporters, State Senator Napoli. He said that if the bill becomes law (that is, if the reconstituted U.S. Supreme Court upholds it), things would return to what they used to be in South Dakota. To quote him somewhat inaccurately, he said that in the old days if a young man got a girl pregnant, the entire community would know about it and he would be forced to marry the girl so that the two of them could properly care for and raise the child. He also said that the exception for the life of the woman would also apply to cases in which the woman had been brutally raped and assaulted. However, the language of the bill allows for no such exception.
Senator Napoli believes in a past that never was. What about the woman who is impregnated by a man who already has a wife and several children? What about the man who turns out to be a wife-beater and child abuser? What about the girl impregnated by her father, her step-father, or other male relative? All of these are examples of events that happened in the past and that happen today. My own grandmother became pregnant by her sister’s husband and had to find a man to marry her. Her first child, her favorite son, was born a bit too soon after the wedding ceremony. Such babies used to be called “foot-sore” for that reason. In her case, she was lucky. Her husband was a humane man and a good father. She bore him several other children, including my mother.
In fact, the way things used to be was that middle-class girls and women never had any problem obtaining abortions if they wanted one. A good father with a pregnant teen-age daughter would find a physician who would perform the operation safely and in secret. The community would know, but the knowledge would be quiet gossip, not public outrage. There would be no compulsory wedding. That’s the way it was in the village where I grew up. At least two girls in my high school class became pregnant out of wedlock. One had an abortion. After graduating from high school, she married and had a family. The other girl followed Senator Napoli’s example and married the man who’d impregnated her. It was a bad marriage and she eventually divorced her husband after giving birth to more children. She subsequently made a good marriage, so her story has a happy ending. I also knew of married women who had abortions because they already had several children.
In my little village, abortion was illegal, of course, but it wasn’t a disgrace. There was no talk of when life begins. Abortion was not equated with murder. Except in certain very strict Protestant sects, a woman was not publicly shamed for becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
Those are the “good old days” that I remember. My memory is rather different from that of Senator Napoli.
I was particularly incensed at the comments of one of the supporters, State Senator Napoli. He said that if the bill becomes law (that is, if the reconstituted U.S. Supreme Court upholds it), things would return to what they used to be in South Dakota. To quote him somewhat inaccurately, he said that in the old days if a young man got a girl pregnant, the entire community would know about it and he would be forced to marry the girl so that the two of them could properly care for and raise the child. He also said that the exception for the life of the woman would also apply to cases in which the woman had been brutally raped and assaulted. However, the language of the bill allows for no such exception.
Senator Napoli believes in a past that never was. What about the woman who is impregnated by a man who already has a wife and several children? What about the man who turns out to be a wife-beater and child abuser? What about the girl impregnated by her father, her step-father, or other male relative? All of these are examples of events that happened in the past and that happen today. My own grandmother became pregnant by her sister’s husband and had to find a man to marry her. Her first child, her favorite son, was born a bit too soon after the wedding ceremony. Such babies used to be called “foot-sore” for that reason. In her case, she was lucky. Her husband was a humane man and a good father. She bore him several other children, including my mother.
In fact, the way things used to be was that middle-class girls and women never had any problem obtaining abortions if they wanted one. A good father with a pregnant teen-age daughter would find a physician who would perform the operation safely and in secret. The community would know, but the knowledge would be quiet gossip, not public outrage. There would be no compulsory wedding. That’s the way it was in the village where I grew up. At least two girls in my high school class became pregnant out of wedlock. One had an abortion. After graduating from high school, she married and had a family. The other girl followed Senator Napoli’s example and married the man who’d impregnated her. It was a bad marriage and she eventually divorced her husband after giving birth to more children. She subsequently made a good marriage, so her story has a happy ending. I also knew of married women who had abortions because they already had several children.
In my little village, abortion was illegal, of course, but it wasn’t a disgrace. There was no talk of when life begins. Abortion was not equated with murder. Except in certain very strict Protestant sects, a woman was not publicly shamed for becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
Those are the “good old days” that I remember. My memory is rather different from that of Senator Napoli.
