A Progressive on the Prairie

Via Coat Hangers at Dawn, I see one of the “pro-life” members of South Dakota’s Abortion Task Force is speaking out about what happened in the preparation of the Task Force’s report. (PDF file). You may recall that “pro-choice” members were so offended by it they walked out of the final meeting and submitted a minority report. (Word document).

Here’s just some of what Dr. Marty Allison, a Pierre pediatrician and chairwoman of the task force, told the Pierre Capital Journal Monday:

• “It [the report] should have been scientifically-based and objective. Instead it was very subjective and biased. In reality, it was the personal opinion of a select few of the members, and it included false information not reflective, in my opinion, of the testimony we heard.”
• “Rape and incest victims’ testimony was not included in the report. It didn’t correlate with the views of the authors, so they didn’t include it.”
• “There was a lot of information omitted. And there was a footnote that said exceptions–like with rape and incest victims–were not considered. That’s false. We heard testimony and it was discussed.”
• “The people who wanted the law wanted to use the task force findings to validate the legislation.”

None of this is really that surprising. While do not know if Dr. Allison mentioned or testified to any of this during the legislative session, she at least deserves credit for being forthright when asked by the media. I’ll go out on a limb and say that interview makes it quite unlikely she will be asked to appear in any ads supporters of the legislation purchase in the event the effort to refer it to a public vote is successful.

George Orwell

April 11th, 2006 | Category: Politics |  Print This Post | Subscribe to comments | Comments are currently closed | Trackback URL