HB 1293 -- The Hoghouse Remix

"Scream real loud!"...that's what Pee-Wee told us to do whenever we heard the Word of the Day. Today's Word of the Day: hoghouse: (v.t.) a procedure occasionally used in the legislature whereby a committee or a member from the floor will move to strike everything after the enacting clause of a bill and insert in lieu thereof the substance of an entirely new bill.

HB 1293 has been hoghoused, so commentators beware; we have a somewhat different battleground. Compare the original version with the version that emerged from the State Affairs Committee today, and you will find a number of significant differences, courtesy of Attorney General Larry Long, who was enlisted to rewrite the bill into more legally defensible language. My wife listened to the hearing online (archived at SD Public Broadcasting) and found fascinating. I find just reading the differences between the bills illuminating:

1. The opening "findings" have been cut from 13 to 5.
2. All talk of mothers' rights to a relationship with the unborn child and the benefits of pregnancy (hypocrisy from the original bill's authors, who were euphemizing their real intent, codifying the obligation to carry a pregnancy to term, if not laying the groundwork for an obligation to get pregnant) has disappeared.
3. The second-opinion requirement is gone.
4. Rape victims are not required to report their rape to the police.
5. Before performing an abortion on a victim of rape or aggravated incest, the doctor must report the crime to the state's attorney or other law enforcement in the county where the crime occurred or, if that information is not known, the county where the patient makes the report to the physician.
6. The bill's name is changed from the "the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act" to the "Prevention of Abortion as Birth Control Act." (Well, at least we're being a little more honest.)
7. If passed, the bill goes straight to a public vote in the 2008 general election.

While I appreciate seeing some of the Newspeak removed from the bill, I'm still bothered at how AG Long doesn't hand out the new bill text until today's committee meeting, before opponents have a chance to research and prepare arguments.

And there's still plenty to oppose. The state continues to presume to judge the nature of the doctor-patient relationship. The state maintains the paternalistic assertion that women risk their health by undergoing abortions, when good science has failed to demonstrate any increased risk of psychological trauma, and when childbirth, according to a physician who testified at today's hearing, poses to the mother 12 times the mortality risk of having an abortion in the first trimester. The state suggests it knows better than doctors how to take care of women than trained medical professionals and intrudes on the doctor-patient relationship.

Finally, the state continues to expend great amounts of energy crafting and debating abortion legislation when it could do much more tangible, quantifiable good by working education, health care, energy, and a host of other issues that could make life better for every living person in the state. (And we commentators are just as guilty of directing so much hot air toward this one piece of legislation.)

If HB 1293 -- The Hoghouse Remix ("Aaaaaaaahhh!" Remember, kids, I told you scream real loud!) -- passes, maybe the only silver lining will be that it won't go into effect until the voters get a swing at it for 21 months, meaning that next year's legislature will have cleared its plate of the abortion issue and will be able to concentrate on bigger policy issues affecting the pocketbooks of all South Dakotans.

But obviously, we need to keep an eye on the legislature -- who knows how many other short-notice amendments they may try to sneak onto HB 1293?