Rat Rants 2006
All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day
One of the dullest states in the nation, South Dakota, is trying to lead the country into the 21st Century, leaving Roe vs. Wade, science, logic, and rational law in history's dust. You gotta wonder why women live in a state that doesn't even consider them to be a critical character in their own abortion. The newest anti-abortion legislation penalizes a doctor who performs an abortion, the doctor and pharmacist who prescribe and deliver "morning after pills," and anyone with an IQ higher than a piece of toast.
Who is making these nutty laws? Who's electing the idiots who make the nutty laws?
Taking a look at the state's demographics, I found that South Dakota population growth is half the nation's average, while the birth rate is at the norm. So, more folks are leaving the state than are immigrating to this intellectual dead zone. Surprise! 51% of the population are women. Dumb women, apparently. The state proudly boasts that 80% of its citizens are high school graduates. Just guessing, I'd suspect that not many of that number are women. I wonder what the South Dakota berka looks like? While you wouldn't expect this to be a state full of scientists, I was surprised to see that science is even taught in South Dakota schools. As dumb as their politicians are, it appears that the average high school graduate is no worse equipped than the national average. I have to wonder if South Dakota suffers more than typically from the usual Midwest "exodus of the intelligent?"
The state isn't particularly concerned with children already born. Like most of the country, a significant percentage (16%) of children live in poverty and a substantial percentage (36%) live in low income families. Education-wise, the state has a high school graduation rate that is slightly higher (4% higher) and substantially fewer college graduates (18% fewer) than the national norm. Not surprisingly, the state is overwhelmingly white (85%, compared to 58% nationally) with the majority minority being "American Indian" (10.7%). In just about every educational measurement, SD is pretty much in the middle of the pack. It's a depressingly poorly performing pack, but South Dakota isn't as overwhelmingly moronic as I'd expected.
If nothing else, I think this proves that statistics are not often useful data. Some aspects of the stats prove that South Dakotans are less than committed to bettering the lives of children once they are born. So, what does the state's most recent piece of legislative foolishness mean to the rest of us?
Taking this idiot attempt to control abortion at its face value, let's look at what South Dakota legislators are saying. The doctor who is asked to perform this operation, an abortion, is contracted by a woman and, often, her male partner. If the doctor performs the operation, he/she is going to be prosecuted as a Class 5 felony (five years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines). The woman, on the other hand, is assumed to be a helpless, defenseless idiot; "Nothing in this Act may be construed to subject the pregnant mother upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction and penalty." Judging by the general simplemindedness of the majority of South Dakota, I think that assumption is probably correct.
Per this silly piece of shit legislation, a woman who becomes pregnant and requests and pays for and subjects her unborn child to an abortion is guiltless. Obviously, she must be too dumb to know what she's doing? A man/husband who, with the woman, also conspires to request the abortion is also innocent of any crime? The only person being prosecuted by this moronic law is the doctor, the hired help. This is, obviously, a chicken-shit way to short circuit the process, attacking the extremely limited supply of professionals who provide the service instead of the unlimited supply of customers who want the service. That doesn't make it right or logical, though. Just like all conservative totalitarian attempts to regulate human behavior by superstition, ignorance, arrogance, oppression, and tyranny, this legislation is seriously stupid.
However, it does open up some creative opportunities for people wanting to commit other types of crimes. Simply put, the South Dakota law says that the only person guilty of a crime-for-hire is the hireling. If this anti-logic spreads to other South Dakota criminal laws, an employee violating a law is a criminal. An employer who requires, requests, or specifically contracts that employee for the purpose of violating the law is disassociated, legally, from the crime. Practically speaking, this has been the way the law works for corporations since the beginning of Corporate America. I guess it's about time that other areas of criminal law apply the same twisted logic.
Deep in the heart of the Mob, hit men must be considering asking their clients to stay away from South Dakota these days. It only makes sense that the guy who does the hit is screwed in SD, but the person who paid for the contract should be held as innocent as a woman wanting an abortion. What's the difference, after all? If you want someone whacked, try to hire the job done in South Dakota. Murder is legal in that state as long as you don't do the killing yourself.
February 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment