Tag: politics

By Ken Blanchard

South Dakota is one of a small number of states that has a conscience clause in its codified laws protecting pharmacists. See 36-11-70:”No pharmacist may be required to dispense medication if there is reason to believe that the medication would be used to: (1) Cause an abortion; or (2) Destroy an unborn child… or (3) Cause the death of any person by means of an assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing.”

This is a good idea. It would be abhorrent to compel a doctor to perform an abortion or euthanize a patient or administer a lethal injection to a condemned man. Compelling a pharmacist to supply the drugs for any of these procedures is much the same.

Does a pharmacist have a similar right to refuse to dispense contraceptives in violation of his or her religious scruples? This isn’t clear from the above mentioned law. Nor is it obvious that such a right is implicit in the Free Exercise of Clause of the First Amendment, according to which neither Congress nor the states can prohibit the free exercise of religion.

In Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith (1989), the US Supreme Court decided that the Free Exercise Clause is not a get out of jail free card. If a law is neutral with regard to religion and applies the same to everyone regardless of religious identity or motives, then it is constitutional even if it interferes with some religious practice. For example, anyone can be prohibited from lighting a bonfire in a national forest or possessing and ingesting a hallucinogenic drug. It doesn’t matter if your motives are religious or merely recreational.

On the other hand, if an apparently neutral law is in fact specifically designed to target a religious practice, then it violates free exercise. In Church of Lukumi v. Hialeah (1992), the high court struck down a municipal ordinance that targeted the Santeria religion. The law allowed the killing of animals for almost any purpose except as a religious sacrifice.

In 2007, the Washington State Board of Pharmacy issued a rule compelling”pharmacies and pharmacists to dispense lawfully prescribed emergency contraceptives over their sincere religious beliefs.” In Stormans v. Selecky (2012), a federal district court in Tacoma, Washington struck down this anti-conscience clause.

It is often said that a pharmacist who is unwilling to fill a legal prescription should get out of the business. In fact, pharmacists can refuse to stock a drug for fear of robbery (oxycodone), or because it is too expensive or involves too much paperwork, or because the pharmacy has an agreement with a manufacturer. The pharmacy can refuse to deliver medicine because it does not accept a patient’s particular insurance or because it does not accept Medicare or Medicaid.

Under the Washington Board’s rule, a pharmacy could be penalized for refusing to dispense a lawfully proscribed medicine only if the refusal were religiously motived. To prohibit an action precisely because of its religious motivation is a clear violation of free exercise.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is a professor of Political Science at Northern State University and writes for the Aberdeen American News and the blog South Dakota Politics.

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

Kristi Noem at the Rapid City town hall meeting. Photo by Cory Heidelberger.

I attended a town hall meeting hosted by the School of Mines, Congresswoman Kristi Noem and two Rapid City Tea Party groups last Saturday.

Hmm… Rep. Noem, Tea Partiers, and a grouchy leftist in the room… could be trouble, right?

I went in vowing to be on my best behavior. As I listened to the pregame chatter about our oppressive government, I reminded myself (and my friends on Twitter) that even if the folks around me were”sometimes confused, sometimes wrong,” we must remember that we are”all fellow citizens, all wanting what’s right for America.” Instead of getting my hackles up and spoiling for a fight, I hunkered down in my seat, determined to simply take notes and pictures and let my fellow South Dakotans have the floor without any left-wing heckling.

My resolve almost failed. I made it through absurd statements that ObamaCare means citizens”no longer have any decisions over their health care” and that South Dakota’s drivers license database represents looming tyranny (well, the database may not, but all the documents we have to haul in to get our licenses do!). But toward the end of the show, a fellow South Dakotan asked Rep. Noem why she was not outraged that President Obama had appointed two Muslims to the Department of Homeland Security. The man recited the atrocities visited on America by Muslim terrorists, thus implying that Muslims should not serve in our government.

This bigoted neighbor was right across the aisle from me, maybe ten feet away. I considered interrupting him. I considered calling him out then and there.

But I held back. I kept my seat. Whether it was South Dakota reserve, respect for quasi-parliamentary procedure, or just the fear that I was outnumbered, I didn’t speak immediately in the face of bigotry.

Alas, neither did Congresswoman Noem. She addressed other aspects of the rambling question he posed and didn’t touch the bigotry.

The town hall ended, and folks lined up to say a few words face-to-face and get pictures taken with the congresswoman. I had all the video and notes I needed to compose some blistering lefty blog posts.

But I hung around. After everyone else had gotten some time with the congresswoman, I got the chance to shake Kristi Noem’s hand for the first time. Of all the complaints and policy criticisms I might have raised, I chose to ask her one question. I asked her if she would renounce the bigotry expressed by that questioner.

Rep. Noem said she believes in freedom of religion. She said we should not judge people by their religion. She rejected the idea that we can disqualify people from public service based on their religion.

Had I spoken up immediately, had I disrupted the meeting, I might properly have been tossed out. By holding my tongue and waiting to speak until others had spoken, I got the chance to change a blog headline from”Noem Countenances Bigotry” to”Noem Rejects Bigotry.” I’m glad I waited.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and is currently teaching French at Spearfish High School. A longtime country dweller, Cory is enjoying “urban” living with his family in Spearfish.

By Ken Blanchard

In 1996 Rick Santorum and his wife Karen lost a baby boy, Gabriel, two hours after he was born. The couple took Gabriel home so that their other children could meet their baby brother. The children cuddled him, sang to him and took pictures.

After Senator Santorum virtually tied with Mitt Romney in the Iowa Caucus, a couple of media luminaries passed judgment on how the Santorums dealt with their loss. Alan Colmes on Fox News opined that voters would regard it as crazy behavior,”taking his two-hour-old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real.”

Eugene Robinson, speaking on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC was equally hopeful that the story would turn into a scandal for Santorum.”He’s not a little weird, he’s really weird… Not everybody is not going to be down with the story of how he and his wife handled the stillborn child. It was a body that they took home to kind of sleep with it, introduce it to the rest of the family. It’s a very weird story.”

Ignorance speaks loudest when it is largest. Gabriel Santorum was born alive, not”stillborn.” The Santorums did not”play with it” nor did they”kind of sleep with it,” whatever that is supposed to imply. What they did was exactly what the American Pregnancy Association recommends for grieving parents. Those guidelines include bathing and dressing the baby, reading or singing to the baby, naming the baby and having the child christened. ‘You will be able to spend as much time as you need with your baby,” the guidelines explain,”but at some point you will need to say goodbye.”

Perhaps you have to have suffered the loss of a miscarriage, or stillbirth, or the death of a child after birth to have some idea what the Santorums faced. The American Pregnancy Association guidelines make sense to me. Loss is a natural part of human life and grieving is how the wounds of loss begin to heal. In the best cases, grieving is a part of loving and remembering. It can leave us richer in spirit, if a little or a lot sadder than before.

One cannot properly grieve without coming to terms with the reality of the loss. Saying goodbye”will probably be one of the most challenging things to do because it is so final.” Yes. A real, live human being was here and now that person is really gone from here. It is as simple and as utterly unacceptable as that.

Alan Colmes has apologized to Senator Santorum for his thoughtless remarks. I don’t know if Robinson has, but an apology was in order in both cases. They hoped to score cheap points against a candidate whose party and whose opinions they do not like. All they managed was to expose themselves as ignoramuses.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is a professor of Political Science at Northern State University and writes for the Aberdeen American News and the blog South Dakota Politics.

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

I used to be a Republican. In the heady wisdom of my philosophical twenties, I thought all politics boiled down to simple principles of limited government and liberty. The inconsistency of South Dakota Republicans on those principles caused me to re-examine my right-wing politics and opened the door to my becoming a Democrat.

Governor Mike Rounds started me down the leftward path. Several years ago, he was on public radio talking about the federal No Child Left Behind Act, of which I was not fond. I called in and asked the governor to enunciate a consistent Republican defense of a big federal intrusion into a local matter. The governor asked how anybody could be against improving education. He did not answer my question.

Not so long ago, Dennis Daugaard eschewed”mandates” and a”top-down approach” to government. In archetypical Republican terms that a younger conservative me would have loved, Daugaard said in 2010 that under his leadership,”the state will not dictate actions to school districts.” Now Governor Daugaard wants to impose a statewide program of teacher evaluation and merit bonus pay on the school districts.

The other day, my Democratic friend Rep. Frank Kloucek ran a bill by the House Commerce and Energy Committee in Pierre. Kloucek’s bill would have cut the maximum length of non-compete clauses in half, from two years to one. The younger conservative me would have argued for doing away with non-compete clauses altogether. South Dakota is a”right-to-work” state. We don’t let unions stop workers from doing the jobs they do best; why would we let former bosses keep good workers out of the labor force?

The Republican majority on the committee killed the bill. So much for the right to work.

Now the inconsistency of folks on the right doesn’t prove the superior ideological purity of the folks on the left. I didn’t bail on the GOP just because Mike Rounds dodged one question. South Dakota Republicans’ current mistakes on education and labor policy don’t mean Democrats get everything right (a couple of Dems on that House committee voted against Frank’s non-compete bill, too).

But inconsistency was the hobgoblin of my young mind. It still is. Inconsistency caused me to question my faith in the claims of the right. It caused me to give the ideas of the left a fair hearing. And it caused me to admit that I’d been backing the wrong horses for the wrong reasons.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and is currently teaching French at Spearfish High School. A longtime country dweller, Cory is enjoying “urban” living with his family in Spearfish.