Thanks, amanasleep -- I must say that the people who read Saletan's articles usually respond with more logic and less bile than other authors, even if we don't always agree.

The legal argument behind abortion is not that the entity isn't human, but that it's not a legal person. Roe v. Wade turned on that distinction. The South Dakota law tries to go right up to that border, but not cross it.

Personally, I'm not sure that it was a law that will persuade anyone, and might very well backfire. I believe that some women, especially impressionable young women, might be willing to go along with an abortion because they don't realize how far developed the fetus is, even at an early stage. This law might dissuade them, but I don't know if it'll hurt the argument in the long run. I wish we could advance the argument in a more upfront way, on both sides, but that's politics these days.