Lords of your uterus—Rep. Jon Hansen, FB photo with Allen Unruh, Leslee Unruh, and Bishop Donald DeGrood, posted 2022.05.02.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court, the South Dakota Legislature will convene in Special Session to debate new pro-life laws. Here are some of the measures that I will advocate to be passed during our Special Session (thread):
(1) Strengthen our ban on abortion that goes into effect (“triggers”) when Roe v. Wade is overturned and increase the criminal penalty for performing illegal abortions.
(2) Ensure the right to equal protection of the law for all human beings–including those living in utero.
(3) Affirm our telemedicine abortion prohibitions and criminalize the usage and shipment of abortion drugs into the state when those drugs are being used to terminate the lives of South Dakota babies.
(4) Require that out of state abortionists refer pregnant South Dakota mothers to third party counseling to screen for pressure and coercion before abortionists can terminate the life of South Dakota babies across state lines.
(5) Prohibit all advertising for abortion services in South Dakota.
(6) Ban South Dakota corporations like Amazon and Citibank from paying for the expenses to abort South Dakota babies and prohibit the state from doing business with any corporation that pays for babies to be aborted.
(7) Pass a resolution calling on congress to ban abortions at the federal level [Rep. Jon Hansen, Twitter thread, 2022.05.16].
Obviously Hansen spent more time in law school fostering his long-standing misogyny and fetus obsession than learning actual law. If his proposals withstand judicial scrutiny (and Hansen, like too many of his Republican colleagues, is really bad at Constitutional law), they’ll only oppress women, expand government, and damage South Dakota’s economy.
Hansen’s first proposal, to strengthen the abortion ban that formal pronouncement of the Alito draft will trigger, is pretty ominous. South Dakota’s trigger law already will make any abortion performed at any stage of pregnancy for any reason other than saving the life of the pregnant woman a Class 6 felony. How will Hansen strengthen that ban? Raise it to a Class 5 felony? Take away the exception for saving the woman’s life? Require women to report to pregnancy camps so the Unruhs and Bishop DeGrood can watch over them until they deliver their babies into good Christian hands? Hansen’s top priority indicates that even the draconian trigger law won’t be enough to satisfy these theocratic Republicans’ thirst for control over women and doctors and everyone else.
Hansen’s second proposal is similarly vague and wholly fallacious. Whatever he plans to do to “ensure… equal protection” for fetuses, he’s actually contradicting himself. In pretending that fetuses are “human beings… living in utero” just like human beings living in Utica, he’s mistaking potential life for actual life and prioritizing the rights he imputes to that potential stuff over the rights of actual human beings, free women who might actually vote for Hansen if he weren’t so committed to denying their equal protection under the law.
In his third proposal, Hansen opens the pretense of calling fetuses “South Dakota babies,” a subtly scary phrase that implies the state’s ownership of fetuses and the women who are carrying them. Hansen proposes to ban the use of abortion drugs in South Dakota and their shipment hereto. Banning this safe and effective method of abortion only increases the chances that the women who will continue to seek to end their unwanted pregnancies face more delay in obtaining less safe abortion care and suffer injury and death.
Hansen isn’t content with sticking his nose in local women’s business. Hansen proposes to reach across state lines and control the actions of health care providers in other states. Somehow Hansen will use South Dakota law to force out-of-state health care providers to refuse to provide abortions to women from South Dakota until the women submit to the anti-abortion propaganda sessions that his friends the Unruhs and others get to force onto all women in this state seeking abortions. That Hansen could extend this authority across state lines seems absurd: South Dakota can’t stop or delay a woman from going to the doctor in Denver and ending her pregnancy any more than South Dakota can stop its residents from traveling to Denver and sampling the herbal remedies at the local head shops.
And how will South Dakota know if a woman is pregnant and is traveling out of state to end that pregnancy? Will Hansen’s Special Session legislation require women to report their menstrual cycles to a statewide database and restrict travel for women more than two weeks late? Will Hansen establish checkpoints at the South Dakota border and interrogate all females? Will border guards attach tracking devices to all women’s cars so they can flag any vehicle that comes within a block of any out-of-state medical facility or other establishment that may provide abortion procedures and pills? Will South Dakota DCI agents then travel to those out-of-state facilities to execute search warrants and interrogate their staff? How far will Hansen have to reach into the private affairs of traveling women and out-of-state businesses to enforce his total control over fetuses?
Hansen’s fifth proposal, prohibiting all advertising for abortion services in South Dakota, is simply unworkable. If South Dakota bans abortion, I’ll put up ads on this blog for anyone who wants to advertise safe and legal services in other states. Thousands of South Dakotans will read those ads. Come and get me, Jon. Just try it. Hansen’s only real option for banning advertising is to adopt a Putin-style plan to isolate South Dakota’s Internet… which won’t work any better in South Dakota than it does in Russia.
We can only hope Hansen’s sixth proposal, to ban corporations from reimbursing their South Dakota employees to escape Hansen’s overlordship of their uteri and to boycott businesses that cover employees’ exercise of their reproductive rights, spurs Citibank, Amazon, and other businesses counting on Hansen’s District 25 to provide happy skilled workers to help elect Democrats Dan Ahlers and David Kills a Hundred to the Legislature. Hansen wants to control what health care benefits private businesses provide to their employees. As with his desire to expand forced counseling to out-of-state abortions, Hansen will have to come up with some intrusive scheme requiring businesses to report to the state all of their payments to employees and the pregnancy status of their employees. So much for Hansen and the Republicans being the limited government, pro-business party.
Hansen’s last proposal, a resolution calling on Congress to pass a national abortion ban, doesn’t do anything in South Dakota. However, it does expose the real agenda. Justice Alito’s claim that abortion is properly decided at the state level is just a ruse to establish a foothold for abortion bans in Republican-controlled states. The moment the Republicans get the White House and majorities in Congress, they will forget Alito and states’ rights and argue that abortion should be decided at the national level. Don’t be fooled by Mitch McConnell’s downplaying prospects for such national legislation: he and Hansen and their party will seize the first opportunity they get to ban abortion nationwide. Hansen wants to control every woman in America, not not just every woman in South Dakota.
Such is the misogynist authoritarianism that professed conservative Jon Hansen considers so urgent that it must be enacted in a Special Session of the Legislature. To gloss his attack on women and freedom, Hansen throws out a bunch of vague promises about things he might support in the next regular Session.
The passage of these protections for the unborn during a special session should be followed up in regular session by the most pro-family agenda that our state has ever seen:
Cut property taxes for families with kids. Cut grocery taxes. Put parents in control of their child’s upbringing and education. Combat drug and other addictions that destroy families. There’s so much opportunity if we will pursue a stronger pro-family, pro-life South Dakota [Hansen, Twitter thread, 2022.05.16].
Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard those campaign slogans before. Half of them—parental control of children and education, more war on drugs—are just code for more of Hansen’s theocratic agenda. Tax cuts might be nice, if Hansen and his party could ever actually deliver them, but Hansen can’t afford to starve the government; he needs those taxes to keep flowing in to fund the government’s enforcement of all of his abortion restrictions and other controls on your private life.
And even those slogan-promises are not as important or urgent to Representative Jon Hansen as seizing immediate control of every woman’s body in South Dakota.
Allen Unruh is an Elkton boy: his family was run out of town after his father, also a “chiropractic physician,” was caught molesting children during exams at a time in South Dakota history when quacks enjoyed intimate physical contact with boys to determine who would participate in school sports. You see this all the time with Talibangelicals: someone threatens to out one as a serial molester, he runs an op-ed in the paper then diverts some cash he raises from sermonizing wedge issues to shut up the people he’s raped or groped.
Think of it as the Bill Cosby Effect: the more sanctimonious the speech the more cash gets raised to hide career criminal behavior. It does make one wonder if all the chiropractors in South Dakota are intellectually incompetent or just thugs. Fred Deutsch and Jeff Monroe want to end women’s civil rights, Scott Munsterman groped at least one teen and Allen Unruh wants to rewrite history by leaving Native genocide and human-caused climate change out of school curricula. These are “pro-life” people who rabidly embrace state-sponsored killing of persons convicted of capital crimes.
In Sioux Falls cleric Don DeGrood replaced Paul Swain to lord over some of the slush fund that buys silence from Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg and South Dakota’s depraved legislature.
Bob Newland
2022-05-17 08:19
May the lord open… Jon Hansen’s head, with his terrible swift sword.
Vi Kingman
2022-05-17 09:20
One of the worst interviews I’ve ever heard.
The reporter should have asked how Hansen going to enforce any of this.
The one thing with Trump, who’re finding out who this people really are. They hid it before but they now feel empowered to come out of the closet so to speak.
Richard Schriever
2022-05-17 10:03
The phrase “South Dakota babies” implies an ownership of the citizenry by the state, not vice versa. Standing the constitution on its head – indeed.
All Mammal
2022-05-17 10:04
Crusading for the unborn is such a wrung-out cop-out. GOD decides life when or if she ever breathes it into the lungs to make it a living thing. Until then, it is a part of its host, sucking no breath. Bible proves it, you wanna-be El Crappy Tans. Ugh that pic makes me need to go shower. They are truly the stain on the Devil’s blue dress.
The question isn’t who is discussing their options with their physician, the question is: why is this man so envious of my uterus? Does he want to wear it? I’m scared of that man…and I beat up 900 lb baby bulls.
RoughRider
2022-05-17 10:13
This seems to be a “perfect family” where all babies are born to a “traditional white” couple.
What about a 12 year old girl who can not safely give birth to a child. Will the South Dakota Government care of and support all unwanted children born to children/girls/women who can not raise and take care of them?
I guess any of of the reservations would be a good place for a Planned Parenthood. You can actually plan it you know.
A simple statewide vote would be nice too. Theres a history there right?
O
2022-05-17 12:27
I see an insurance issue on the horizon much like the religious objection to birth control. Now that there can be state objection to abortion as health care, employers (or now the state) can object to providing insurance that covers that health care.
I’d like to see this pro-family agenda Item: no-cost-to-the-mother prenatal, neonatal, child and personal health care. SD should commit to the care and well-being of mothers and children in this state — NO MATTER THE COST!
Eve Fisher
2022-05-17 12:47
A few questions:
(1) So they’re going to stop, among other things, interstate travel by pregnant woman because the State is going to presume that all pregnant women are, undoubtedly, traveling simply to get an abortion. (No one ever travels while pregnant to be with their families for the holidays or go on a vacation, etc.)
How are they planning to determine pregnancy?
Will every woman have to get a pregnancy test at the border?
Will there be age limits, or will it be all women, from the 2 year old on up to Granny?
Will pregnant women need a note from her physician and/or male-in-charge-of-her to assure everyone that she is not going for an abortion, just to visit the folks?
Will that be acceptable?
Or will they assume that the man is lying as well?
(2) They’re also going to make sure no woman gets suspicious packages that might be abortion pills through the mail.
Are they going to start opening all our mail?
What if it’s addressed to a man in the family?
What if it’s packaged with HIS viagra?
O
2022-05-17 13:25
Eve, I would guess, much like the Texas example of vigilante justice, your “good neighbors” will watch for any and all possible infractions to turn you in to the proper moral authorities for your transgressions. Set up a tip line, empower communities to enforce . . . What good is a law allowing us to burn witches if it does not bring a community together?
O , it’s always been this way just take George Carlin “pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to 9 months. After that, they don’t wanna know about you. They don’t wanna hear from you. No nothing! No neonatal care, no daycare, no Headstart, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If your pre-born, fine, if your preschool, your fu-ked.” Really nothing different.
You’ve got a tiny di-ked tator from Dell Rapids who knows, he knows what’s best for all South Dakotans. Hansen is just another “person” who wants to stop anything from happening. Maybe he can stop lawyering and coach football at the Dells, they won’t have to change the signs for coach. That will save money Jon, just the way your parents saved you from having to learn to write h. Dell Rapids was such a nice place too. Maybe he’ll go back to writing songs. He could play George Carlins Abortion song, right up his alley. Oh, that’s right, that’s where he wants abortion to end up, in the back alley. Way to many lyrics to learn in the Carlin song anyway.
Eve…I believe the answer to your questions is the affirmative in every worst case. Put nothing past this bunch as they enforce the chaotic nonsense that they pass off as government.
Don’t the Taliban have a rule requiring that women be accompanied by a man to go out in public? That’s the kind of rule Jon Hansen needs to enforce his proposals.
On “South Dakota babies”—what makes a baby a “South Dakota baby”? If a Florida prostitute comes to Sturgis for the Rally and is impregnated by a biker from Oregon, is she carrying a South Dakota baby? Can the state get a court order preventing her from returning to Florida or extraditing her back to South Dakota if gets back to Florida and discovers she’s pregnant? If a pregnant woman from Canada drives through South Dakota, does her fetus become a South Dakota baby for the duration of her trek down I-29? If the Highway Patrol catches that pregnant Canadian speeding past the Nunda exit, can the HP detain her for the duration of her pregnancy to make sure she doesn’t harm that fetus on our highway or any other state’s highway?
Francis Schaffer
2022-05-18 08:54
This is filled with unintended consequences as another ‘well’ thought out idea; from mean vindictive bullies. So when will a social security card need to be assigned, and when will a life insurance policy be valid and age will have to be adjusted to declaration of personhood from actual live birth for voting purposes. Oh the webs that can be woven. These laws contradict the Christian concept of ‘free will’. There I go again with the theocracy; I apologize for that. Cory, it is a South Dakota baby when the ‘elder betters’ decide it is a South Dakota baby. Well soon organizations may lose non-prophet status and when that happens the old ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ will rear it’s ugly legacy upon these organizations.
bearcreekbat
2022-05-18 12:05
Rough Rider makes a good point about the lack of exceptions in the case of the “12 year old who can not safely give birth to a child.”
Another ultra-right wing former legislator Bill Napoli’s infamous comment probably reveals a bit more about the mindset needed to convince Hansen and his cohorts to make an exception for particular women:
“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.”
Maybe Hansen and his cohorts would consider a “religious virgin” exception so long as the female was the correct religion.
John
2022-05-18 22:49
Is it likely that Jon Hansen and ilk actually hate and detest our nations founders?
Ben Franklin put an abortion recipe in his math textbook.
To colonial Americans termination was as normal as ABC, 123.
“Franklin wasn’t even the first issuer of a math textbook on either side of the Atlantic to include among its materials a recipe for abortion, though his book certainly had the most reliable and explicit one. William Mather’s 1699 Young Man’s Companion also has one (the London book would inspire the very first arithmetic book to be printed in the colonies in 1705, by Franklin’s old boss Andrew Bradford).”
“In a 1760 edition of The American Instructor held by the American Antiquarian Society, a reader has pulled out the page that included the abortion recipe, either to save it from or to save it for prying eyes. Another copy, held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, shows that the Gilbert family treasured the book so much that they used it as kind of a family Bible starting in 1755, with Thomas Gilbert entering the names and birthdates of his children into it, even including the five-day duration of Rachel Gilbert’s labor with their daughter Sarah. Births, abortions, arithmetic—all of them were wrapped up together and taken for granted in this colonial American book, which thanks to Franklin circulated far and wide and for generations, including among enslaved Americans. In 1771, two Black men, both fugitives from enslavement, left at night from Nanjemoy, Maryland, in search of freedom and took with them a gun, powder, and two books, one of which was “Fisher’s Arithmetick.””
“Alito’s draft argues that “Roe and Casey must be overruled,” pointing out that “the Constitution makes no reference to abortion.” Maybe so, but for the Framers’ contemporaries who learned to count with Franklin’s help, safe and accessible abortion was a matter of simple math.”
Certainly Noem (and Hansen) will move to ban Franklin’s book, and the study of Franklin’s “divisive concepts”.
Allen Unruh is an Elkton boy: his family was run out of town after his father, also a “chiropractic physician,” was caught molesting children during exams at a time in South Dakota history when quacks enjoyed intimate physical contact with boys to determine who would participate in school sports. You see this all the time with Talibangelicals: someone threatens to out one as a serial molester, he runs an op-ed in the paper then diverts some cash he raises from sermonizing wedge issues to shut up the people he’s raped or groped.
Think of it as the Bill Cosby Effect: the more sanctimonious the speech the more cash gets raised to hide career criminal behavior. It does make one wonder if all the chiropractors in South Dakota are intellectually incompetent or just thugs. Fred Deutsch and Jeff Monroe want to end women’s civil rights, Scott Munsterman groped at least one teen and Allen Unruh wants to rewrite history by leaving Native genocide and human-caused climate change out of school curricula. These are “pro-life” people who rabidly embrace state-sponsored killing of persons convicted of capital crimes.
In Sioux Falls cleric Don DeGrood replaced Paul Swain to lord over some of the slush fund that buys silence from Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg and South Dakota’s depraved legislature.
May the lord open… Jon Hansen’s head, with his terrible swift sword.
One of the worst interviews I’ve ever heard.
The reporter should have asked how Hansen going to enforce any of this.
The one thing with Trump, who’re finding out who this people really are. They hid it before but they now feel empowered to come out of the closet so to speak.
The phrase “South Dakota babies” implies an ownership of the citizenry by the state, not vice versa. Standing the constitution on its head – indeed.
Crusading for the unborn is such a wrung-out cop-out. GOD decides life when or if she ever breathes it into the lungs to make it a living thing. Until then, it is a part of its host, sucking no breath. Bible proves it, you wanna-be El Crappy Tans. Ugh that pic makes me need to go shower. They are truly the stain on the Devil’s blue dress.
The question isn’t who is discussing their options with their physician, the question is: why is this man so envious of my uterus? Does he want to wear it? I’m scared of that man…and I beat up 900 lb baby bulls.
This seems to be a “perfect family” where all babies are born to a “traditional white” couple.
What about a 12 year old girl who can not safely give birth to a child. Will the South Dakota Government care of and support all unwanted children born to children/girls/women who can not raise and take care of them?
I guess any of of the reservations would be a good place for a Planned Parenthood. You can actually plan it you know.
A simple statewide vote would be nice too. Theres a history there right?
I see an insurance issue on the horizon much like the religious objection to birth control. Now that there can be state objection to abortion as health care, employers (or now the state) can object to providing insurance that covers that health care.
I’d like to see this pro-family agenda Item: no-cost-to-the-mother prenatal, neonatal, child and personal health care. SD should commit to the care and well-being of mothers and children in this state — NO MATTER THE COST!
A few questions:
(1) So they’re going to stop, among other things, interstate travel by pregnant woman because the State is going to presume that all pregnant women are, undoubtedly, traveling simply to get an abortion. (No one ever travels while pregnant to be with their families for the holidays or go on a vacation, etc.)
How are they planning to determine pregnancy?
Will every woman have to get a pregnancy test at the border?
Will there be age limits, or will it be all women, from the 2 year old on up to Granny?
Will pregnant women need a note from her physician and/or male-in-charge-of-her to assure everyone that she is not going for an abortion, just to visit the folks?
Will that be acceptable?
Or will they assume that the man is lying as well?
(2) They’re also going to make sure no woman gets suspicious packages that might be abortion pills through the mail.
Are they going to start opening all our mail?
What if it’s addressed to a man in the family?
What if it’s packaged with HIS viagra?
Eve, I would guess, much like the Texas example of vigilante justice, your “good neighbors” will watch for any and all possible infractions to turn you in to the proper moral authorities for your transgressions. Set up a tip line, empower communities to enforce . . . What good is a law allowing us to burn witches if it does not bring a community together?
O , it’s always been this way just take George Carlin “pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to 9 months. After that, they don’t wanna know about you. They don’t wanna hear from you. No nothing! No neonatal care, no daycare, no Headstart, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If your pre-born, fine, if your preschool, your fu-ked.” Really nothing different.
You’ve got a tiny di-ked tator from Dell Rapids who knows, he knows what’s best for all South Dakotans. Hansen is just another “person” who wants to stop anything from happening. Maybe he can stop lawyering and coach football at the Dells, they won’t have to change the signs for coach. That will save money Jon, just the way your parents saved you from having to learn to write h. Dell Rapids was such a nice place too. Maybe he’ll go back to writing songs. He could play George Carlins Abortion song, right up his alley. Oh, that’s right, that’s where he wants abortion to end up, in the back alley. Way to many lyrics to learn in the Carlin song anyway.
Eve…I believe the answer to your questions is the affirmative in every worst case. Put nothing past this bunch as they enforce the chaotic nonsense that they pass off as government.
Don’t the Taliban have a rule requiring that women be accompanied by a man to go out in public? That’s the kind of rule Jon Hansen needs to enforce his proposals.
On “South Dakota babies”—what makes a baby a “South Dakota baby”? If a Florida prostitute comes to Sturgis for the Rally and is impregnated by a biker from Oregon, is she carrying a South Dakota baby? Can the state get a court order preventing her from returning to Florida or extraditing her back to South Dakota if gets back to Florida and discovers she’s pregnant? If a pregnant woman from Canada drives through South Dakota, does her fetus become a South Dakota baby for the duration of her trek down I-29? If the Highway Patrol catches that pregnant Canadian speeding past the Nunda exit, can the HP detain her for the duration of her pregnancy to make sure she doesn’t harm that fetus on our highway or any other state’s highway?
This is filled with unintended consequences as another ‘well’ thought out idea; from mean vindictive bullies. So when will a social security card need to be assigned, and when will a life insurance policy be valid and age will have to be adjusted to declaration of personhood from actual live birth for voting purposes. Oh the webs that can be woven. These laws contradict the Christian concept of ‘free will’. There I go again with the theocracy; I apologize for that. Cory, it is a South Dakota baby when the ‘elder betters’ decide it is a South Dakota baby. Well soon organizations may lose non-prophet status and when that happens the old ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ will rear it’s ugly legacy upon these organizations.
Rough Rider makes a good point about the lack of exceptions in the case of the “12 year old who can not safely give birth to a child.”
Another ultra-right wing former legislator Bill Napoli’s infamous comment probably reveals a bit more about the mindset needed to convince Hansen and his cohorts to make an exception for particular women:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/welcome-to-senator-bill-n_b_17669
Maybe Hansen and his cohorts would consider a “religious virgin” exception so long as the female was the correct religion.
Is it likely that Jon Hansen and ilk actually hate and detest our nations founders?
Ben Franklin put an abortion recipe in his math textbook.
To colonial Americans termination was as normal as ABC, 123.
“Franklin wasn’t even the first issuer of a math textbook on either side of the Atlantic to include among its materials a recipe for abortion, though his book certainly had the most reliable and explicit one. William Mather’s 1699 Young Man’s Companion also has one (the London book would inspire the very first arithmetic book to be printed in the colonies in 1705, by Franklin’s old boss Andrew Bradford).”
“In a 1760 edition of The American Instructor held by the American Antiquarian Society, a reader has pulled out the page that included the abortion recipe, either to save it from or to save it for prying eyes. Another copy, held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, shows that the Gilbert family treasured the book so much that they used it as kind of a family Bible starting in 1755, with Thomas Gilbert entering the names and birthdates of his children into it, even including the five-day duration of Rachel Gilbert’s labor with their daughter Sarah. Births, abortions, arithmetic—all of them were wrapped up together and taken for granted in this colonial American book, which thanks to Franklin circulated far and wide and for generations, including among enslaved Americans. In 1771, two Black men, both fugitives from enslavement, left at night from Nanjemoy, Maryland, in search of freedom and took with them a gun, powder, and two books, one of which was “Fisher’s Arithmetick.””
“Alito’s draft argues that “Roe and Casey must be overruled,” pointing out that “the Constitution makes no reference to abortion.” Maybe so, but for the Framers’ contemporaries who learned to count with Franklin’s help, safe and accessible abortion was a matter of simple math.”
Certainly Noem (and Hansen) will move to ban Franklin’s book, and the study of Franklin’s “divisive concepts”.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/ben-franklin-american-instructor-textbook-abortion-recipe.html