Hey, petitioners for codifying Roe v. Wade! Dale Bartscher says you’re a bunch of liars:
One anti-abortion group is already organizing against the petition drive. Dale Bartscher is the president of South Dakota Right To Life.
“We’ve seen these circulations firsthand. Many of them lie. They mislead. They don’t tell the truth to the public about the measure that they’re circulating,” Bartscher said. “That’s where South Dakotans can take our stand.”
Bartscher said the amendment would legalize late term abortions. The amendment allows lawmakers to prohibit third trimester abortions [Lee Strubinger, “Abortion Rights Backers Optimistic About Petition Drive Following Mid-Term Elections,” SDPB, 2022.11.18].
Dale Bartscher is a perfectly personable dude. I’ve had pleasant conversations with Dale at various fairs. It’s just a shame that he’ll turn around and say such mean and false things about decent people. Naturally, Bartscher doesn’t give any specific examples of lying circulators and lies told. Come on, Dale, name some names, give some details!
The folks circulating Dakotans for Health’s initiative petition to restore abortion rights in South Dakota have one simple pitch: codify Roe v. Wade. That’s no lie: that’s exactly the policy option petitioners want to put before the voters.
Bartscher and his fellow theocrats raise the scarecrow of “late-term abortions!”, but for the five decades when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, third-term abortions were stunningly rare, constituting less than 1% of all abortions and usually taking place in extreme medical situations that are none of Dale’s or my or government’s business.
But if theocrat Dale thinks there are pregnant women getting to their 36th week and larkishly deciding to terminate their pregnancies and that such imagined decisions are any of the state’s business, codifying Roe v. Wade allows the state to make such imagined decisions its business. The third and final line of the proposed constitutional amendment reads, “After the end of the second trimester, the State may regulate or prohibit abortion, except when abortion is necessary, in the medical judgment of the woman’ physician, to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman.”
That language is plainly printed on the petition. Signers can read it; circulators can point it out and read it for them. Dale, if you have examples of circulators telling voters anything to the contrary, why not have a conversation with those circulators? Why not correct them on the spot? I suspect that the petitioners are more interested in telling the truth about abortion rights than you and Jon Hansen are.
Dale Bartscher is a pretty good example of the banality of evil.
3. Rich women have full reproductive rights while women at the lower income margins suffer chilling effects on those rights. Women in Texas, Wyoming and South Dakota who can afford it simply jump on a plane and fly to Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Denver or elsewhere for their procedures. Imagine a woman on the Standing Rock or Pine Ridge doing that.
Dale Bartscher, being a ‘good’ South Dakota Republican is also (like many GOP pols) quite adept at innuendo, falsehoods and outright lying (aka. ‘smoke/mirrors).
It is a large part of the SD GOP DNA!
Larry, in South Dakota, “Let them eat cake” seems to have been resurrected easily since its first application in France!
The right wingnuts are using their fear and hate playbook that worked well with their defeating the decriminalization of cannabis. The fear, hate, and blame someone else playbook works well on uninformed and under informed voters.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels
Crusading for the unborn is a lazy sinner’s imitation of acting righteous for God. It takes nothing. You don’t have to actually help anyone or build any meaningful relationships. You don’t have to spend a dime on housing, education, bail, food, medicine. You get to pat yourself on the back like you did Godly acts. When you really only demeaned women and children. If you wanted to do what the Bible says, you would roll up your sleeves and get to work helping orphans, widows, the poor, hungry, prisoners, and the sick and dying. But that’s too hard and gets messy. You might have to invest in actual people a part of yourself. The Book never mentions crusading for the unborn. Fake little Christians feel good about keeping women down. Despicable.
Hope I don’t catch anyone mistreating a circulator. That’s when you can call me Smote.
The truth is still the truth even if no one believes it.
A lie is still a lie even if everyone believes it.
Unless it’s The Holy Lie, cibvet, then it’s the good lie.
Is a pattern developing? I have a sense of Déjà vu. Those readers that have followed recent threads on abortion perhaps have noticed that this is not the first time arguments attempting to defend a woman’s right to protect her own body against an unwanted pregnancy have been met with repeated claims calling defender’s “liars.” For example, Kurt Evans recently repeatedly labeled me a “pathological liar” who has been “peddling the same tired lies about abortion over and over for years on end.”
Kurt Evans failed to provide examples of such alleged lies when I responded, in multiple comments:
Like the abortion opponents in Cory’s story, Kurt has not identified any such “pathological” or “repeated” lies he accused me of making in my defense of a woman’s right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy.
I again ask Kurt, or any other DFP reader, to identify any statement I have written here or elsewhere that he or she contends is a “lie” about abortion facts or SD law pertaining to abortion, so I can either (1) correct such statements if they are in fact a “lie,” incorrect or inaccurate; or, (2) provide additional documentation of the accuracy of the statements.
Spot on, All Mammal!
I would go furthermore to again say that our “pro-life” GOP refuses to take on the issue of unwanted pregnancy in any of its complexity, choosing instead an oversimplification of abortion as virtue signaling.
“Late term abortions” is dog whistle subterfuge for “lazy and promiscuous Native, Mexican, and Black women”. Those are the groups “connies” envision are the “baby killers’ not their own gentle, Bishop serving, white women.
You know it’s sad how low the Republican party has sunk. The majority of them would support a woman’s right to choose. They don’t dare because they need the anti-abortion vote. They might vote in some sensible gun restrictions. They don’t dare because they need the gunners votes. They might try some reasonable immigration measures. They don’t dare because it’s their election ruse every election. They might find it OK to make life easier for LGBTQ people. They don’t dare because they need the votes of the haters. They might find it in their hearts (small), to let everyone have access to health insurance. This one floors even me, what’s the negative?
It’s so sad that a formerly great party has allowed itself to allow the Qs and all their ilk to take over the party of Lincoln.
Mark A- a very thoughtful analysis, I must say! You nailed it, sir.
What I don’t understand, is that those upper echelons of the GOP cannot see that the path they chose is ultimately unsustainable because it is so fraught with hypocrisy along with smoke and mirrors.
At least the Dem’s oppositions to their GOP’s party of no stated “platform” of ideas is full of society improving ideas!
The GOP instead of something like past Dem’s mantra as (“A chicken in every pot”) will be “A gun in every pair of
hands!”
This “burn it all down” ethic of the Republican party has led to this:
There have been
at least 606 mass
shootings in the U.S. this year”
NYTimes
The GOP is in its “death spiral”. I have been saying that since Mike Rounds infamously adopted that phrase and applied it to any and every policy, person or bit of progress gained in South Dakota and nationally by the “DEMOCRAT” party, in the all out Republican slander of their liberal, progressive adversaries on the other side of the aisle.
Then he threatened President with his tough guy Trump imitation of “come and take it, and the dog bites, too.”
The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch, originally created by Alexander Hamilton, has come out with the recent headline “REPUBLICANS IN RUIN” blaming it all on Trump, the “stable genius”.
And his followers, too, I would say.
By “Post Staff Report”. (Watch for Fox News’s Sean Hanity to tiptoe away quietly.)
Bartscher seems to jump the rails in his zeal to attack circulators.
Trump’s Bill Barr, Mike Rounds, Pompeo and many lesser highly placed, educated professionals still stinging from their evil association as Trump Republicans, figuratively perform handstands justifying their embarrassing right wing obstructionism-for-power.
Look at any recent news/opinion screed, like:
“Trump’s supporters wanted a disrupter. His voters felt that the left was taking a wrecking ball to the country, and they wanted to strike back with their own.***
But it is now clear he lacks the qualities essential to achieving the kind of unity and broad election victory in 2024 so necessary if we are to right our listing republic.”
— Bill Barr https://nypost.com/2022/11/21/trump-threatens-to-burn-down-the-gop-its-time-to-move-on/
Indeed. “supporters—the left—wrecking ball—they wanted—But NOW— KIND OF UNITY — our listing republic” (emphasis added)
Bill Barr is a liar. An embarrassment. Unaccountable.
These guys write stuff that, in literally every sentence, is filled with lies and disinformation.
Who could be surprised that the Right Wing voting block, the SDRTL, is unable to honestly achieve legislation without slandering every aspect of their majority opposition?
Mark, as has been discussed a billion times…
The myth of “The Party of Lincoln”.
The answer is complex in history.
It is easy to see how a[n] Eisenhower Republican who voted for McCain sees themselves an ally of Lincoln, but it is hard to see a fella with a confederate flag truly and earnestly trying to insinuate Lincoln would have been his type of Republican.
America itself is a federation of states, with a strong central government, that is Democratic (favoring the people’s voice) and Republican (ruled by law and elected officials); or more technically, a Federal Republic; with strong Democratic tradition.
Republican President Eisenhower, “I have just one purpose … and that is to build up a strong progressive Republican Party in this country. If the right wing wants a fight, they are going to get it … before I end up, either this Republican Party will reflect progressivism, or I won’t be with them anymore.”
…we can’t say Eisenhower or Lincoln would be a modern Republican, things really did change that much after 64′.[18]
Lincoln was a Republican by party affiliation, but that meant something very different back then, today we would loosely consider him a mix of:
A moderate Democrat (like Kennedy) over his stance on taxation, federal power, immigration, religion, and Civil Rights versus States’ Rights…
And, a moderate left Republican (like Eisenhower) over his stance on protectionism, federal power, and aristocratic government.
http://factmyth.com/factoids/lincoln-was-a-republican/