Rather Her Than Me
How Goldstein did this interview without clouting this man a good one upside the head, I do not know. Getting through it without doing violence could almost be described as saintly.
My dinner with Napoli
Nancy Goldstein – Raw Story columnist
Published: Wednesday March 29, 2006
I wasn’t sure whether to use chorizo or bacon in my paella last weekend, so I called South Dakota state senator Bill Napoli and asked him to make my decision for me.
Stephanie Millman inspired me to contact Bill — one of the most vocal supporters of the new state ban on virtually all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. Millman’s brilliant cartoon, which has been making the rounds of the blogosphere, lampoons Napoli’s conviction that women can’t be trusted to make decisions about our own bodies — and conveniently provides his work and home numbers.
Even if you don’t recognize Bill Napoli’s name, you’ve probably heard of him. He’s the South Dakota state senator who created a big splash on the PBS NewsHour earlier this month with his detailed — some might say prurient — description of an “acceptable rape” that would merit an exemption from the state’s abortion ban.
[…]
I wish I could tell you that our heart-to-heart convinced Bill that women like Michelle, who appeared on the same PBS NewsHour segment, should also have the option of a safe, legal abortion. Michelle doesn’t fit Bill’s lurid criterion of a religious virgin who “was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it.” She’s just a woman in her 20s with a low-paying job and two children who drove five hours to the state’s only abortion clinic (it operates one day a month, and the provider is flown in by Planned Parenthood Minnesota).
But no such luck. Our 10-minute discussion was mostly a more polite version of the kinds of exchanges that pro-choice and anti-choice folks have been having for several decades now.
[…]
My take on this is that the politicians who supported this ban and signed it into law care a lot more about raising their political profiles by challenging Roe v. Wade than they do about the lives of the women, children, and families they’re supposed to serve in South Dakota.
Like Napoli, they only saw what they wanted to see, relying on medically unsubstantiated testimony and outside political operatives in their quest to score points with the national anti-choice right at the expense of their constituents. Read the rebuttal and see for yourself.
Better yet, call Senator Napoli and read it to him.
Read more: Abortion S. Dakota War On Women
