Sweet Land of Liberty

Motherhood, of course, is a sacred thing. Were it not for motherhood, we wouldn't have investors, entrepreneurs, marketing executives or consumers. Accordingly, the more heaven-progressive parts of the greatest country in the world are racing to put themselves on a par with the likes of El Salvador, Burkina Faso and Chad by mounting a direct frontal assault on motherhood avoidance. The governor of South Dakota has signed a bill to criminalise abortion except as a measure to save the woman for further breeding. "Emergency contraception" will be available in cases of rape or incest, at least for those who have paid attention in South Dakota's doubtless comprehensive sex education classes.

The Republican senator Bill Napoli went on television to show just how comprehensive such classes can be. Noting that most abortions are carried out for "convenience", he proceeded to depict the circumstances in which he would consider a woman sufficiently inconvenienced to be justified in seeking one: "A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged," he said. "The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalised and raped, sodomised as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life."

So there. Even Republicans from South Dakota can sympathise with an occasional rape victim, just so long as she's a beat-up religious virgin with a superstitious reverence for the marriage vows and fallopian tubes up her rectum.