It would be an interesting turn of events if the women of the Oglala nation suddenly found themselves with more comprehensive health care, better choices, and more options than white non-tribal women in South Dakota at large.

http://www.indianz.com/News/2006/013061.asp

In the light of South Dakota’s new abortion ban, Cecilia Fire Thunder (President of the Oglala Souix band at Pine Ridge Reservation) has vowed to set up a Planned Parenthood clinic within the reservation.  Just a reminder, that Planned Parenthood’s mission is NOT to provide abortions for women…but to provide them with complete, affordable and convenient reproductive health care including annual exams, counseling and family planning.

I was once in a conversation with a guy who said he hated “Indians” (he meant Native Americans, but I think the whole “earth being round” thing had stretched his mind to the breaking point, and there wasn’t any more tensile compensation available to encompass the concept of a whole ‘nother continent between Europe and India.  This might possibly be why he’s not too upset about outsourcing.  Maybe he thinks we’re sending all of our jobs back to ourselves.)

Anyway, I asked him why…because punching him in the face would be anti-social, and I’m not like that.

So he listed off a whole bunch of stuff that I don’t really want to have to type because it’s not germane to the topic, and because I would have to wash my hands afterwards, and my skin is feeling a little dry lately.

But nestled in the middle was the statement “I don’t like the way they treat their women.”

Ignoring all of the implications in the fragment “their women”…

I think we see that every culture has its bad examples when we have a man (presumably a white, gun-totin’ Protestant) dismissing concerns about abortion laws dictating medical care to women with the words “simple rape”.

That man is Bill Napoli –R South Dakota.  You can see a picture of him here.  You can also read his fairly graphic definition (it’s almost as though he’s given it a LOT of thought) of a rape that would constitute enough of a trauma that carrying the baby to term would endanger the woman’s health (and thus qualify her for an abortion).

Just a hint for those of you who don’t want to follow the link:  Some of the requirements are that she be religious, a virgin, and was “saving herself” for marriage.  Ah…the power of victimhood.

So in the world of Bill Napoli, only Fundamentalist Christians get to have abortions (and then only if they have a really pathetic, graphic, twisted victim story) and the rest of us get shotgun weddings (no really, he speaks FONDLY of the days when the whole community would come out and force young women to get married if they got pregnant).

So…when DOES the next bus leave crazytown?  Because I’ve just come to the conclusion that I don’t want to have to live with Fundamentalist Christians.  I don’t like the way they treat “their women”.