In her continuing campaign for the 2024 Trumpublican Vice-Presidential nomination, Governor Kristi Noem is proposing two anti-abortion bills, a copycat Texas ban than would prohibit abortions after fetuses exhibit a heartbeat and allow vigilantes to haul abortion providers or abettors into court for bounties, and a codification of the Governor’s medically unjustified prohibition on taking abortion pills at home.
Activists can pack the committee rooms to protest these bills, but the Senate’s swift approval of another of Noem’s provocative culture-war bills, the ban on transgender athletes in female school sports, indicates that lots of impassioned committee testimony won’t stop the Legislature’s drive to discriminate and oppress disfavored groups, including women. The only viable option for stopping these abortion bans appears to be referendum: let the bills pass, spend the next two months building a coalition to circulate petitions, and on March 28, the moment the Legislature adjourns, start pounding the pavement collecting signatures to refer both laws to a public vote in November. South Dakota voters rejected abortion bans in 2006 and 2008; there’s more chance that a similar majority would turn out to toss these new Taliban laws than that a majority of Republicans in Pierre would.
Collecting 16,961 signatures by Monday, June 27 is a lot of work, but it would provide a rewarding opportunity for grassroots political activism to engage new volunteers and voters in a discussion of women’s rights, medical science, and the proper role of government, all things that our Republican Governor and Legislature ignore. Properly leveraged, that discussion could lead voters to recognize that the only way to stop such bad laws from cropping in the future is to replace the lawmakers on the ballot who keep proposing such bad laws. Smart Democratic candidates willing to run as straightforward opposition candidates and defenders of women and science and properly limited government could turn the 2% of the electorate necessary to erase Noem’s 2018 margin of victory, install just nine more Democrats in the Senate, and ensure vetoes of any such infringing bills for at least four years.
But even if the voters block these two bills, the Trump Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe v. Wade. The moment the Court issues that ruling, South Dakota’s “trigger law” banning abortion comes into effect. Under SDCL 22-17-5.1, if the Supreme Court reverses its standing precedent and allows states to prohibit abortion at any stage of pregnancy, performing an abortion will be a Class 6 felony unless the doctor can make an “appropriate and reasonable medical judgment that performance of an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant female.” The trigger law includes no exceptions for rape or incest, and it applies from conception, without regard to fetal heartbeat.
By subordinating women’s rights to fetus fetish, a Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade would moot a vote on Noem’s new abortion bills before they would become law by passing a far more drastic abortion ban. A referendum of the Texas bill could at least stop the state from paying bounties to anti-abortion posses, but the mifepristone restrictions would become largely irrelevant, as South Dakota’s trigger law would only allow abortions in the case of immediate threats to the pregnant woman’s life, and I’ll speculate with my Google medical degree that by the time a woman is in such clear danger from a pregnancy, doctors won’t be able to prescribe mifepristone to intervene.
To further frustrate opponents, Noem is including an emergency clause in the mifepristone restriction. That emergency clause, making the bill law immediately upon passage instead of waiting until July 1, would require a two-thirds vote of the House and the Senate. If that bill passes, the emergency clause would prohibit any referendum.
So maybe we are back to lobbying the Legislature to stop Noem’s abortion posturing… but it won’t be any fun—i.e., it won’t be with the joy of knowing that we are fighting to protect women’s rights. Maybe we can get enough doubtful Senators to deny the mifepristone bill a two-thirds vote, but the only argument that might work with a majority of Republicans is to point out that, hey, the Trump Court is going to give South Dakota a near total abortion ban, so neither of these bills is necessary. Why clutter the books just to give Kristi a couple extra campaign props? You did you work in 2005 when you passed the trigger law; let Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett do your work for you.
There isn’t time to work up an initiative to repeal the trigger law alongside referring Noem’s double-barreled fetus worship. The LRC doesn’t have to take up any initiative petitions until after the Legislative Session is done on March 28, and the Attorney General could then sit on any petition for 80 days, well past the May 3 deadline for submitting initiative petitions for the 2022 ballot.
There thus seems no way to stop a near-complete abortion ban in South Dakota in 2022. The only resort left for voters who’d like women to maintain their equal citizenship is to turn out in force in November and turn Noem and the Republican Taliban out of office. Elect a Governor and legislators who respect life, liberty, and the equality of women, leaders who will undo South Dakota’s abortion restrictions and defend women from further infringements of their rights.
New Mexico is the political inverse of my home state. It’s where if the lopsided Supreme Court of the United States ultimately overturns Roe v. Wade women will still be free to exercise their reproductive rights because Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the Respect New Mexico Women and Families Act that repealed the 1969 state statute banning abortion. In New Mexico Medicaid covers abortions and even transportation in rural areas to get to clinics in Albuquerque.
And it should be noted that New Mexico is + 50% Latino and/or indigenous. I.E., highly Catholicized where religious. However New Mexico is also one of the states with the lowest percentage of its population who are religiously active.
South Dakota Catholics are outliers. Catholics worldwide are much more liberal than wh0 pose as Catholics in SD. Richard sites NM. Ireland and Italy are other examples.
– New Year’s Day marked the day that abortion services became legally available in the Republic of Ireland. In a referendum in May last year, 66.4 per cent of voters chose to repeal the eighth amendment to the constitution, which protected unborn children and permitted abortion only where the life of the mother was at stake.
– Abortion in Italy became legal in May 1978, when Italian women were allowed to terminate a pregnancy on request during the first 90 days. A proposal to repeal the law was considered in a 1981 referendum, but was rejected by nearly 68% of voters; another referendum aimed at eliminating the restrictions was rejected by 88.4%
Porter, the national referendum is the end conservatives fear most. Certainly, they can get some states (including SD) to ban abortion, but this issue does not have the same national support. When the Supreme Court finally does rule (and it will be on the side of banning abortions) and this finally becomes a purely national issue, conservatives will realize they have overplayed their hands. However, the time between a national referendum and a new “right to unborn life” constitutional ruling from the SC will be some dark days indeed.
The white surpremists will love this, they can get their sisters pregnant and rape with free will. The only thing is they have to rape white women. You know they won’t be replaced.
I agree “O”. When SCOTUS repeals Roe it will be the beginning of the next downfall of the Republican Party.
Where is this unofficial “lobbying” money coming for the reversal of women’s rights? My hypothesis is the money is coming from perpetrators of child pornography, child sex trafficking, and pedophiles.
I can think of at least Denny Sanford having opportunities to “grease the wheel” with some cash without it being an official government transaction.
I think women are only a means to an end. The authors are repealing women’s rights because they want more kids for their own agendas.