Senator Marion Michael Rounds is getting headlines for talking like a swing-state Republican (or maybe a Republican Supreme Court nominee) and saying on CNN Sunday that he doesn’t support Senator Lindsey Graham’s divisive national 15-week abortion ban. For this political moment, Rounds is sticking with the states’ rights line that his party invokes more out of convenience than conviction:
…right now, we should allow the states to explore the different possibilities about the appropriate way.
Here in South Dakota, we have one which is what I actually signed into law when I was governor back in 2005-2006. I think the individual states will come up with a multiple—a whole lot of different ideas about how to appropriately discuss abortion in general. And then I think there will be a consensus over a period of years.
But, at this point, to have Congress step back and have to tell all of the states that we know better than them how to handle this is probably not the right direction to go.
We actually looked when—before the last decision, we actually looked as a group of us trying to ban any abortion past 20 weeks. We weren’t successful at that time. I don’t think any proposal today would be successful in the House and the Senate. I think a better approach probably will be to allow the states to work through this and to find the appropriate language on a state-by-state basis and to find that common ground.
After that, maybe Congress steps in again. But, at this point, I think the states are in a better shape to explore and to find the right direction on a state-by-state basis [Senator M. Michael Rounds, interview with Jake Tapper, CNN: State of the Union, 2022.09.18].
“Consensus” is Rounds’s code for “the next time Republicans control the Senate.” Rounds and other Republicans aren’t willing to risk a vote for Graham’s bill right now, so Rounds will settle for subjugating women state by Handmaid state until the headcount in the undemocratic Senate, gerrymandered House, and a White House stolen by a national corps of Monae Johnsons will allow Rounds and his misogynist party to force pregnancy on every American woman.
Senator Rounds is not saying he opposes federal legislation to take away everyone’s right to abortion. Senator Rounds is saying he’s just waiting for the day when such a federal ban has the votes to pass.
Rounds is waiting for the Constitutional Convention the Republicans plan to have where they’ll strip us of all our rights.
Maybe the reason Republicans haven’t introduced any meaningful legislation in years is because they are busy rewriting the Constitution in secret. Since they have few scholars to produce a replacement, they have several like Rounds who flip flop around with their words so at this point it’s illegible and worthless like he is.
That blathering fool thinks it is inappropriate for the national gov’t to tell states what is better for a woman’s body? Did it ever occur to him that the WOMAN might be in a better position to evaluate the situation than, say, a dum bass politician like Rounds? yah, probably not…
Cory, wasn’t Rounds the Governor that signed into law the various statutes I have repeatedly cited that explicitly added “unborn child” as a victim in SD’s First Degree Murder (SDCL 22-16-4) statute (which again adds the penalty of death as a possible sentence if the victim is younger than 13), and the language that triggered the removal of approval of abortions at any stage of the pregnancy (SDCL 34-23A-3 through 5) if and when Roe was overruled by the SCOTUS?
Your second Senator is simply saying what he’s been told to say by his “higher ups”.
He’s dog whistling the Republican plank “Why give women 15 weeks? Abortion will soon be banned completely and then we’d have to answer for why we allowed 15 weeks.”
“42% of voters believe U.S. abortion policy should be decided by state governments, compared with 35% who think it should be under the federal government’s purview,”
https://morningconsult.com/2022/09/21/voters-divided-lindsey-graham-abortion-ban/
Justice Samuel Alito and General Michael Flynn are Falangists so the shadow of Francisco Franco looms ever darker on the American experiment.