South Dakota – known to millions of Americans as the home of the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore and the world’s largest biker rally – could soon acquire a new reputation as the laboratory where right-wing conservatives experiment with one of their pre-eminent goals: overturning Roe vs. Wade.
In November, the state’s voters will decide whether to enact or reject the most restrictive abortion law in the country. For many, this is a gut-check moment. Anti-choice forces have gone too far.
This extreme law has no exception for victims of rape or incest and does not provide an exception for the health of a woman. A pregnant woman will be left with no options to treat terminal illnesses like breast or ovarian cancer because pregnant women cannot take many medications or radiation.
This abortion ban allows the government to intrude into a difficult, private decision that should be made by a woman, her family and her doctor. Defeating the ban is fundamental to safeguarding privacy, protecting women and building a better, more just country for all people.
The right to decide when to have children without government mandates remains an essential American value. Controlling child-bearing decisions will help women and families gain equal access to economic opportunities. If the voters affirm this law, the women of South Dakota will lose their constitutionally guaranteed rights immediately, but Americans across the country will feel the consequences.
Thirteen states already have restrictive abortion-ban legislation pending. As this battle looms, the people of South Dakota are justifiably baffled by their state’s position as the battleground. Why South Dakota? Why now? While the state has mirrored the national center-right ideological drift of the past 25 years, it is by no means a hotbed of either extremist conservatism generally or of the pro-life movement in particular. South Dakota is not defined by the religious right, but instead by a tradition of libertarian conservatism.
After decades of the gradual, nickel-and-dime erosion of reproductive rights, the far right has made a calculated decision to proceed directly to an end-game strategy. Their goal: to use South Dakota’s anti-choice legislation as a vessel to ride to the Supreme Court, ideally arriving there sometime after the 86-year-old liberal Justice John Paul Stevens vacates his seat, making room for President Bush to appoint a fifth anti-choice justice.
For South Dakota, much is at stake in this debate, but this vote will have a strong ripple effect across the country. Families have much to lose and care deeply about their ability to make private health care decisions that keep women safe and healthy. Women who live in remote areas without medical facilities do not want to lose the ability to make an urgent health decision.
In an act of blatant cruelty, South Dakota lawmakers did not leave any exceptions for victims of rape or incest. Women would be forced to carry a resulting pregnancy to term under this law.
For years, ideologically conservative interest groups from out of state have used the South Dakota legislature to push their national social agenda. Divisive issues like abortion, restricting contraception use and abstinence-only sex education dominate the state legislature, and more pressing issues like education, health care and job creation are pushed aside.
Outrage brought unlikely allies together to form the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, a group of doctors, nurses, ministers, homemakers, teachers, business owners and elected officials – Republicans and Democrats alike – to put this extreme law on the November ballot in an effort to override the legislature and repeal it. The 2006 elections are not only going to decide what party controls Congress, but how far extremists will be allowed to push their social agenda.
Jan Nicolay, co-chair of the Campaign for Healthy Families, is a former Republican state legislator and high school principal from Chester, S.D. Maria Bell is a practicing OB/GYN in Sioux Falls, S.D. Sarah Stoesz of Minneapolis is CEO of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.
