Cecelia Fire Thunder's enthusiasm for abortion may have received a lot of press and impressed her pals over at Planned Parenthood but her reputation among the Oglala Sioux may be on the decline. It turns out that the tribe's ethics are much more enlightened towards the sanctity of life than are those of Ms. Fire Thunder. That, at least, is the position described by Patrick Lee in a weekend editorial written for the Rapid City Journal.Below is printed a summary from the Journal's online service but here is another story (offering a couple of additional items) from the Bismark Tribune.
The proposal by Oglala Sioux Tribe President Cecelia Fire Thunder for a women’s clinic offering abortion services on Pine Ridge Reservation might be in conflict with tribal law. It might also lead to another attempted impeachment of Fire Thunder, who survived two similar challenges on unrelated issues last year.
Fire Thunder proposed the clinic in response to a new state law, scheduled to take effect in July, banning almost all abortions in South Dakota. She said the reservation's sovereign status would allow physicians to perform abortions at a clinic there, despite state law.
But Patrick Lee of Rapid City, a retired chief judge for the Oglala Sioux Tribe and current instructor in tribal law at Oglala Lakota College, challenged that idea Saturday in a Forum piece in the Rapid City Journal and in an interview later in the day. Lee said offering abortions would conflict with tribal law and a pervasive respect for life among the Oglala.
“Life is sacred -- the winged, two-legged, four-legged. You hear constant references to respect for life,” Lee said. “It’s the tribal law. She could ask the tribe to change the law. And that would be an uphill battle.”
Lee, who teaches tribal law and treaties and federal Indian law at Oglala Lakota College, said a specific portion of the juvenile code clarified the tribe’s respect for the unborn: “a child conceived, but not born, is to be deemed an existing person so far as may be necessary for its interests and welfare to be protected in the event of its subsequent birth.”
