Bill Napoli's America

Bill Napoli is the South Dakota legislator who spoke with almost drooling relish and gusto about the hypothetical "virtuous Christian virgin" he himself would allow to have an abortion in his state -- but no one else.

There is at least one sane person in South Dakota -- Sam Hurst, a Rapid City filmmaker:

The governor's lack of curiosity about the mechanics of the law is a failure of leadership, and a reflection of his blind spot for religious and medical values that differ from his own.

Consider the theory of embryonic development articulated in the law. It is based on a narrow interpretation of Christian values, but it has nothing to do with science, or medicine, or the values of the larger society. Gov. Rounds seems to believe that since the law reflects his values, there are no others. That's his blind spot.

The law prohibits a woman from getting an abortion to protect her health. But it allows an abortion to protect her life. Think about that. It is a remarkably idiotic piece of legislative craftsmanship. Where is the line between "health" and "life"? Who will make the decision? The law is mute on these problems. That's the way it is with religious crusades - big on symbolism, lousy when it comes to the lives of real people.

Can we agree that a woman and her physician should make the decision about the invisible, fleeting line between health and life? No! The whole point of the new law is to take these judgments away from the woman and her physician and put them in the hands of ... whom? Lawyers? Christian elders? A church tribunal? Ah ... an Inquisition.

I asked a local obstetrician: If a woman has been raped and impregnated and is in poor health, he cannot, under the new law, recommend an abortion in the first trimester, when it could be done safely. Instead, he told me, he must wait until death is imminent, when the risk to both the woman and the fetus is at its highest.

Even if the wording of the law is hopeless, Gov. Rounds might reasonably have looked at "legislative intent." Sen. Bill Napoli was eager to weigh in during an interview on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer." He was asked to describe a situation in which an abortion would be allowed to protect the life of a pregnant woman.

My thoughts turned to problems like chronic heart disease or complications from diabetes. But Sen. Napoli, having given the matter serious consideration for several months, went in another direction entirely. "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."

Despite the fact that the law does not make an exception for rape or incest, Sen. Napoli has carved out his own "virgin Christian sodomy" exception.

I can imagine the hospital operating room now - an obstetrician, a pediatrician, a surgeon, a few nurses, the hospital lawyer, a priest, in deference to Sen. Napoli, a psychologist. And oh, lest we forget ... the woman.

"Shall we abort?"

"Well, doctor, she was brutally raped and sodomized, but do we know whether she was a Christian?"

"Was she a virgin? Was she saving herself?"

Of course, Sen. Napoli's comments are bigoted and absurd, but they speak to the intent of many legislators to hoist the banner of a religious crusade rather than actually making law to reduce the need for abortions in South Dakota.

Under this particular model of abortion, virtuous women who were virgins until they were brrrrrrrutally rrrrrrraped (you really have to hear Napoli in his own words to get just how much he enjoyed painting this scenario) may be allowed to go about their business. But married women, single women who are not virgins, Jewish women, Wiccans, Buddhists, and anyone else who doesn't fall into Bill Napoli's madonna complex, must be forced to bear the badge of their shame as fallen women.

Napoli has come about as close as anyone to articulating what the REAL anti-reproductive self-determination movement is about. I just wish he'd just come out and spit it out already. Then people will know the kind of foul people they're dealing with on this issue.