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Stalin in South Dakota
But the point, Melinda, of my hypothetical story about the pregnant woman in South Dakota is that neither she nor her doctors necessarily hold the belief that abortion is the taking of a life. The doctors who require her to sign aren't "pointing out" that there's "a person in there" (or "a human being," in the carefully parsed words of the bill). They're being compelled by the state to go through the motions of simulating that belief, which, I'm sorry, is a Stalinesque absurdity that serves no purpose I can see besides terrorizing that individual patient and driving a wedge into Roe v. Wade nationwide. Doctors in South Dakota, or anywhere else, who are morally opposed to abortion have an option: They can work in a practice that doesn't offer the procedure. In fact, that's what the vast majority of women's health practitioners in South Dakota already do. But for women seeking what is still, whatever one's personal beliefs about it, a legal medical procedure, the options in South Dakota (and if copycat legislation has its way, elsewhere as well) are rapidly narrowing.
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