The Schumer-Alito exchange went like this:

SCHUMER: Does the Constitution protect the right to free speech?

ALITO: Certainly it does. That’s in the First Amendment.

SCHUMER: So, why can’t you answer the question of: does the Constitution protect the right to an abortion the same way without talking about stare decisis, without talking about cases, et cetera?

ALITO: Because, answering the question of whether the Constitution provides a right to free speech is simply responding to whether there is language in the First Amendment that says that the freedom of speech and freedom of the press can’t be abridged.

Asking about the issue of abortion has to do with the interpretation [here the arrow struck its mark] of certain provisions of the Constitution. [Remember those “emanations and penumbras?”]

ABORTIONS BECOMING RARE IN SOUTH DAKOTA 
Former Senate Minority Leader, South Dakota Democrat Tom Daschle, who is a strong advocate of legal abortion-on-demand, was defeated in 2004 by pro-life John Thune, in a stunning display of strength on the part of grassroots conservative, pro-life voters. What led up to Senator Thune’s victory is the fact that South Dakota has become one of the hardest states in the country in which to obtain an abortion.

According to a Washington Post story by Evelyn Nieves written on December 27, 2005, the last doctor to perform abortions in South Dakota stopped about eight years ago. Today, there are four abortionists from Minnesota who fly in on a rotating basis to perform abortions. In addition, South Dakota, largely because of a strong pro-life lobby, is also becoming a leading national laboratory for testing the limits of state laws restricting abortion.

In 2005, the South Dakota legislature passed five laws restricting abortion, after a bill to ban abortion outright had failed by one vote in 2004. A 17-member abortion task force, made up largely of staunch abortion opponents, issued recommendations to the legislature earlier this month that included some of the most restrictive requirements for abortion in the country.

The report states that science defines life as beginning at conception and recommends a law that gives fetuses the same protection that children get after birth, thus banning abortion. Until such a ban, the task force recommends requiring that a woman watch an ultrasound of her fetus, that doctors warn women about the psychological and physical dangers of abortion, and that women receive psychological counseling before the abortion.

One law, passed in South Dakota last year and challenged in court by Planned Parenthood, requires doctors to tell women in writing and in person that an abortion ends the life of “a whole, separate, unique living human being.”