Can We Get A Piece of This?

I see that the U.S. state of South Dakota has decided to plunge into national politics and take a run at Roe vs Wade. (You can read the Washington Post article if you don't believe me.) In other words, some folks in this flyblown state have decided to unravel the rights of more than 150 million of their fellow citizens and impose their Talibanic views on the greater society.

South Dakota -- as represented by its state legislature and illustrious governor -- has decided to outlaw abortion except in cases where the woman's life is in danger. Legislators did so in full knowledge that their decision tweaks the nose of a Supreme Court decision from the 1970s. They adamently reject that decision, and with it the concept that a woman could have some jurisdiction over her own body.

South Dakotans, bless their hearts, are willing to fight the Supreme Court all the way to the Supreme Court. And they feel chuffed about their chances because the U.S. president has just stacked the Supreme Court with a couple of "conservative" justices who might be expected to support the jewel of the American middling west in its puritanical frenzy.

If everything goes according to plan, South Dakota may realize its dream of dictating its wet-dream morals to the huddled masses of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami and Phoenix.

What on earth is South Dakota anyway? It is a rough collection of about 760,000 people. Seven hundred and sixty thousand. About the size as a respectable city in more civilized climes.

It's also about the same population as Northern Ontario which, if you're following my rambling rants, has exactly no -- zero, nada, rien, jamais -- expression of its popular will. No legislature to launch neo-con adventures. No regional body to challenge anyone's court. Not even an appointed governor. Not even an appointed overseer with a panel of local advisors, something that was generally granted by oldtime colonial rulers.

According to opinion polls, the people of South Dakota are evenly split on the their anti-abortion legislation. At best, counting all the babes in arms and drooling seniors, fewer than 400,000 residents of South Dakota actually support the drive to strike down an American woman's right to choose.

Amazing!

Contrast that with Northern Ontario.

Even in its wildest hallucinations, Northern Ontario couldn't impose its will on Fenelon Falls, let alone dictate the morality of the nation. It can't even impose a dog licence bylaw on its own citizens. Technically speaking, it doesn't even have citizens. It just sits there like a big, mute, ineffectual moron, waiting for a kind voice from its provincial master, while the feisty citizens of South Dakota wallow in their democracy like pigs in a mudhole.

I'm beginning to wonder when the Americans will start exporting their brand of democracy up here.

Just think what the people of Northern Ontario could do with an ittybitty slice of good old American-style democracy. We wouldn't have to rewrite the morality of the nation or force women to don burkas. Maybe just a little control over land-use planning...or economic development...or dog licensing bylaws.