http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,405690,00.html
March 13, 2006
The Front Lines of the Religious War in God's Own Country
By Frank Hornig
South Dakota has passed the most restrictive abortion law in the
United States.
But much more is at stake.
The rural state has become only the most recent front line in an
ongoing religious war in the US.
Phillips Avenue in Sioux Falls, South Dakota -- located in the heart
of the flat Midwestern prairie -- is a sleepy thoroughfare.
There are a few businesses along the street, a couple of restaurants,
and a souvenir shop which struggles to attract customers.
But last Thursday, this dreary provincial boulevard became the
dividing line separating two irreconcilable camps in the city -- and
it became the most recent front line in an ongoing war that bisects
the entire nation.
For about an hour, opposing groups of demonstrators swore at one
another across the street, launching a new round in an old dispute
that has long since expanded into a cultural battle -- a bitter fight
that has raged for decades between conservatives and liberals, devout
Christians and women's rights groups.
Last Monday, South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds, a Republican, approved
a radical new law that outlaws abortion under virtually all
circumstances.
Even rape and incest victims are forbidden from getting abortions
under the new law.
By signing the bill into law, Rounds threw down the gauntlet not just
to the majority of Americans -- two-thirds of whom are pro-choice --
but also to the United States Supreme Court, which established the
constitutional right to abortion more than 30 years ago in the
landmark decision "Roe vs. Wade".
A mouse has roared, as one of the most sparsely populated states in
the US has put itself on a collision course with prevailing law.
The battle on Phillips Avenue last Thursday, though, wasn't just about
the protection of unborn life.
For many on the religious right, it's part of a larger struggle for
supremacy in "God's own country."
Catholic priest Father James Morgan traveled to Sioux Falls to support
the few dozen Christian protestors who had gathered there to do battle
with the evil pro-choicers.
"Crimes like slavery and the Holocaust"
But evil, it seems, is in the majority these days.
Even in South Dakota, where about 300 protestors, mainly young women
wearing pink T-shirts, are vocally defending the right to abortion.
The signs they're carrying convey their message loud and clear:
"My body -- my choice" and "Save Roe."
Father Morgan smiles mildly, seemingly confident of victory.
"We're writing history here," he says.
In 25 years, he adds, Americans will liken abortion "to the greatest
crimes of mankind, crimes like slavery and the Holocaust."
Then he turns to offer comfort to five fellow Christians, women
wearing mourning and carrying signs that read:
"I regret my abortion."
The abortion debate has long since moved on from being a controversy
over what's more important: unborn life (pro-life) or a woman's right
to choose (pro-choice).
The larger debate now centers around how liberal or how conservative
Americans want their future society to be.
The burning issues dividing America today are the extent to which
right-wing fundamentalists should influence public life, the
separation of church and state and the relevance of religious morals
in a nominally secular country.
And because the opponents of abortion see the US courts as the primary
backers of the hated secular system, South Dakota's anti-abortion law
is ultimately aimed at the Supreme Court, where it will undoubtedly
come up for review.
The Supreme Court is where the future course of US society will be
decided, and it is US President George W. Bush's declared goal to pull
the court into the conservative camp.
With two new Bush appointees already seated on the Supreme Court, a
third may soon be on the way; 85-year-old justice John Paul Stevens is
likely soon to step down from the bench.
The appointment of a conservative as Stevens' successor could
guarantee a conservative court majority for years to come.
Rural South Dakota has always played a major role in the battle over
abortion.
For the sparsely populated state, with its 780,000 inhabitants, a
consistent pro-life policy has become almost as much of a trademark as
the portraits of past presidents carved into the face of Mt. Rushmore.
"We thought we had won"
Thelma Underberg, director of the regional pro-choice movement, has
been fighting to uphold abortion rights for more than 40 years.
For Underberg, professional and economic equal opportunity and a
woman's right to choose are inextricably linked.
When the Supreme Court passed Roe vs. Wade in 1973, enabling women to
obtain abortions legally anywhere in America, Underberg celebrated.
"We thought we had won," she says.
But now, sitting in her windowless office, she says she doesn't
understand the world anymore.
The 74-year-old has three children, four grandchildren and two
great-grandchildren, and she is active in her church.
Yet while she outwardly resembles her opponents in the pro-life camp,
she refuses to speak with them.
"You might as well be talking to a wall," she says.
The climate began to deteriorate in South Dakota sometime in the
mid-1990s, says Underberg.
The churches, led by the Catholic Church, began politicizing the
abortion issue and endorsing candidates who were willing to oppose
abortion.
Apparently the strategy worked.
South Dakota's state legislature ratified the new law with a majority
of 50 to 18 votes.
"The dividing lines didn't run between the parties or the sexes," says
Democratic state legislator Elaine Roberts.
In the end, religious faith was the deciding factor -- and the crevice
which has been slowly wedging American society apart for several years
came into sharp focus in South Dakota.
Now virtually everything has become politicized.
A seemingly harmless cake-baking contest is quickly transformed into a
pro-choice fundraiser.
The other side, meanwhile, attacks a pro-choice woman as a "lesbian
activist from Minnesota" just because she plans to give a speech in
Sioux Falls.
And the local newspaper, the Argus Leader, is already so intimidated
that it refuses to run editorials on the issue -- the most important
in state politics at the moment.
Lobbying for an abortion ban
Robert Regier, 35, is one of the most successful strategists in the
religious camp.
When he was at college studying constitutional law, he got his
girlfriend pregnant and she subsequently had an abortion.
For him, his work with the South Dakota Family Council is a kind of
atonement for his transgression.
A full-time lobbyist, Regier supported the uncompromising law from day
one.
He called voters on the phone, sent out 15,000 e-mails, and contacted
400 church congregations to encourage priests and pastors to deliver
political sermons.
Regier believes the United States has been drifting to the left for
decades, and says he is pleased that conservatives are gradually
taking a stand for their beliefs.
"Let's hope the country finally wakes up," he says.
As far as Regier is concerned, the separation of church and state may
be something for Europe's heathens, but in America faith should "not
be kept artificially separate."
Regier also pleads against allowing any exceptions to an abortion ban.
Babies conceived in a rape are no less human than others, he says, and
pregnant women who choose not to keep their babies should turn to
their churches for help.
The religious war in the Midwest is gradually threatening to become a
burden for Bush, himself a born-again Christian.
At least five other states in the American Heartland have backed South
Dakota's radical approach.
But such extreme positions are unlikely to sway a majority of moderate
Republican voters in urban areas.
States with larger populations, critical in election season, like
Pennsylvania and Ohio, could easily revert to Democratic control if
the Supreme Court ever decides to overturn its 1973 landmark decision.
Abortion rate on the decline
Two-thirds of Americans are against a tightening of the current
liberal laws on abortion.
Nevertheless, the abortion rate has consistently declined since the
1980s, even without a ban, and has almost returned to its level in
1973, when Roe vs. Wade made abortion legal.
But any moderate, reasoned approach to the issue has long been shunted
aside and the shrill debate in South Dakota isn't likely to change
that.
While one side prays to God that He lead the courts to a wise
decision, the other side waves wire coat hangers -- as a symbol of a
possible return to the barbaric abortion practices of the days before
Roe vs. Wade.
Local physicians, fearing boycotts of their practices, already stopped
performing abortions years ago.
Instead, doctors from neighboring Minnesota fly in each week to
perform abortions in the state's only abortion clinic.
Thelma Underberg has been wearing her pro-choice button far more
frequently these days, especially when she goes to church.
But hardly anyone dares to seriously confront the outsider.
"They gave up on me a long time ago," she says.
_______________________________________________________
We're descending into the netherworld of the American Taliban.
Harry
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