A Heartbreaking Use of Heartbreak in South Dakota

The Washington Post introduced us to Tiffany Campbell in Sunday’s paper. The story opens:

Bad things don't happen to her, Tiffany Campbell used to think. She was a mother of two, enthusiastically pregnant with twins, a churchgoing Republican living a good middle-class life. Why should she care about a political battle over abortion?

Then Campbell discovered that the twins were relying on one beating heart. Doctors told her that neither would survive if she carried them to term, and that the strong one was fading fast. If one were aborted, they said, the other would probably make it.

"I was not going to bury two of my babies," Campbell remembers thinking. "If I can intervene and save one of my babies, I'm going to do it."

Campbell had the abortion at 17 weeks. The survivor, whom she named Brady, is now healthy and 19 months old. When she learned that an antiabortion referendum on South Dakota's Nov. 4 ballot would prevent other women from having the same choice, she threw herself into the fight.

Now, really, would the prolife referendum prevent other women from having “the same choice” that she had to make?

If I (and WaPo) understand her story, little Brady would not have survived had his unviable twin remained in the womb. There’s no prolife bill I’ve ever seen that would prevent doctors from saving Brady’s life by aborting his unviable twin.

In fact, prolife leaders in South Dakota insist their referendum would have had no impact on Campbell’s situation. But you have to read to the last paragraph to find that out, and reporter Peter Slevin doesn’t bother to quote any legal experts on the matter.

However, if prolife leaders are wrong and the wording of the South Dakota referendum denies medically-necessary abortions, then prolife state legislators should simply amend the referendum and try again.

And that’s where WaPo could have helped us readers understand Tiffany Campbell’s motives for making her 19-month-old the poster child for opposition to the referendum. What I want to know is: if the referendum is worded—or can be worded—in such a way so that it covers her unique heartbreaking decision, would she support it?

Abortion advocates are using her unique situation to press for the legality of any and all pregnancy terminations. And that's a heartbreaking use of heartbreak.