It should really come as no surprise that Mayor Mike Rounds signed the extremist abortion ban bill today.  Had Mike not signed the bill, he would have had a Rightwing riot on his hands and his apparent cakewalk to a second term as Governor/Mayor of the City of South Dakota would have been cluttered with an even more zealous extremist from his own party. 

How did we, moderate and liberal South Dakotans, arrive at this point where our legislature overwhelming approved (with support from both parties) and our Governor/Mayor signed a facially unconstitutional ban on abortion?

Because we refused to play the game and the zealots played the game with relish and for keeps.

If you've been reading some of my This Big Days in South Dakota History entries, you should have noticed that the reenslavers of women have been bringing up this ban or one like it steadily since the late 1980s.  Like water dripping on a rock over the years, South Dakota's abortion law was finally changed.  The reenslavers of women supported right to enslave candidates, opposed right to choice candidates, and kept getting people on record with their votes.  They organized and put their money where their 14th Century ideology is.  That's the democratic process and sometimes it is not very pretty.  But it is the only game in town.

While the reenslavers organized, we liberals and moderates whined and complained.  We didn't support or help moderates and liberals.  We took things for granted, knowing the federal courts would be our backstop.  Hell, the reenslavers even took over the state Democratic Party, not that that was much of a skirmish.

Guess what.  This is just the first of many battles to come.

My prediction is that the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit will hold this bill to be unconstitutional.  I'm not convinced that the U.S. Supreme Court will take the case, let alone decide it in favor of the reenslavers.  The Court is probably one vote away from reversing Roe v. Wade.  But Roe has been eroded over time.  It has been stripped and stripped and stripped by attrition.  But that day, when Roe is declared unconstitutional, is coming.  Maybe not with this measure, but maybe the next one.  Or the next one.

The reenslavers can play for time.  Another dead or retired moderate or liberal leaving the Supremes and another Bush appointee and Roe is then likely toast.

In the meantime, we've seen the new battle fronts-- sex education (let's not teach kids about sex so they can produce more out of wedlock kids), mandating abstinence education, and the like.  Next will come what Kansas has experienced, a bitter battle of teaching "intelligent design" instead of evolution in our schools and mandating that the one true God is the Christian God.  See what's going on this session in Missouri if you don't believe me.  Sorry, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, atheists, Hindus, etc.  You're just going to hell. Nothing personal.  You picked the wrong team to play and pray for.

Unless we act--by running for state and local office, supporting those tolerant candidates, and opposing the extremists and reenslavers, our secular, pluralistic, non-religion favoring state and nation will cease to be.  We will live in a sort of Dark Ages, where only the "right" people of the "right" religion will rule, their word and deeds shaped by what they say God tells them.  It's hard to argue with people like that.  The American dream will cease to be and we will more closely resemble Iran than a modern, liberal democracy.  Those of us who disagree will simply be enslaved by their Rightwing Big Brotherism.  Perhaps we will learn to love our new Big Brother and his rules for "better living" that completely defeat the concept of free will by a free thinking people.

Fellow moderates and liberals, we've been too quiet, too uninvolved, and too dismissive for too long.  If the idiocy of our legislature and mayor/governor hasn't awakened you to action for the coming battles for the soul of our state, then nothing will.   The time to bitch and moan is over.  The time to fight back against intolerance and injustice justified in the name of religion has just begun. 

The time has come to pick sides.  Which one are you on?  Oh, and fasten your chin strap, it's going to be a rough game.  The stakes could not be higher.