SPLIT BY ABORTION
The Front Lines of the Religious War in God’s Own Country

South Dakota has drawn the attention of German news mag der Spiegel this week – based on the abortion act and its reactions.

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.

Oooops! It seems like Downtown Sioux Falls hasn’t impressed the Euros very much! Oh well. The Euros don’t always impress this South Dakotan either.

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.

OUCH! Phillips Avenue: “a dreary provincial boulevard”? So much for downtown redevelopment.

The Chief thinks that the “progressive” Deutschers, with legal prostitution to say nothing of abortion, are trying to figure out what the fuss is all about here, and can only account for it as being something akin to the barbaric peasants trying to maintain their values in the face of a euro-ized “progressive” cosmopolitan viewpoint.

The article is worth a look to see ourselves from another perspective, whether it’s really a valid view or not.