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Only One Legislative Amendment out of Eight Survives to Make 2024 Ballot

Legislators proposed eight constitutional amendments for the 2024 ballot this Session. We get to vote on just one.

House members proposed four amendments via House Joint Resolution for the 2024 ballot:

Only the Medicaid expansion sabotage escaped the House alive, and Senate Health and Human Services killed that bad plan last week.

Senators proposed four amendments as well via Senate Joint Resolution:

Censured Senator Julie Frye-Mueller (R-30/Rapid City) chickened out and withdrew SJR 503 before it had a committee grilling. Senate State Affairs killed SJR 504. SJR 502 got all the way to the House floor but died in a floor vote yesterday.

The only amendment headed for the voters is thus the least politically impactful, SJR 505. 2024 general election voters will get to wanly signal their wokish virtue by striking hes and hims and hises and himselfs from the South Dakota Constitution but not changing the practical application of the law to men and women and anyone who posits membership in some other category.

Yes, yes, language matters, but if South Dakotans want a real test of commitment to gender equity, they’ll put next to SJR 505 the Dakotans for Health amendment to codify Roe v. Wade. Reversing South Dakota’s designation of women as second-class citizens who cannot exercise bodily autonomy would restore practical liberty and equality to hundreds of thousands of South Dakotans in ways that no pronoun parade can.

43 Comments

  1. Donald Pay 2023-03-01 08:33

    SJR 505 is critically needed. If one believes pronouns mean something, and some Republicans seem overly concerned about what pronouns people use, current Constitutional language seems to limit the ability of a female, whether transgender or not, to use all the Constitutional powers of various offices. The current Governor, for example, who we assume to be female, seems to be unconstitutionally occupying the office of Governor and using powers the assumed “she” may not actually have. It’s better to make it clear that the person who you elect to the position can actually be Governor with all the powers that position has. The same goes for the other positions and their powers that have the royal male pronoun gender signifier.

  2. Anne Beal 2023-03-01 11:04

    Do you really think women have less body autonomy than men?
    I am reminded of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings when then-Senator Kamala Harris revealed she had never heard of the Military Selective Service Act of 1917. It’s still on the books, Another big war and all you men are going to find out how little body autonomy you actually have, and who are really the second-class citizens here.

  3. Anne Beal 2023-03-01 11:09

    Donald Pay, a rudimentary knowledge of English grammar tells you that when the gender of a person is unknown, the correct pronouns are masculine.

  4. larry kurtz 2023-03-01 11:10

    1. Abortion is health care and a pregnant woman is the patient.

    4. South Dakota’s repeated attempts to restrict access to medical care are not only mean-spirited, they’re discriminatory anti-choice extremism.

    7. Republican politicians drive their anti-woman crusade to raise campaign dollars so ending reproductive rights in red states is Balkanizing women’s health care.

    12. One fifth of all pregnancies end in miscarriage or as some would call God working in mysterious ways but when a person chooses to terminate a pregnancy the creator doesn’t condone that decision? How does that work?

  5. CK 2023-03-01 12:10

    Hmm Anne Beal. I don’t remember that about the Kavanaugh hearings. Do you have a reference point?

    And yes, I do believe that women have less body autonomy than men.

  6. Mark Anderson 2023-03-01 12:13

    Larry, you should count all the implanted souls that God throws away. Billions.

  7. Mark Anderson 2023-03-01 12:58

    Donald Pay, Anne Beal believes that everything is OK if everyone stays in their place. No pronouns needed.
    Body autonomy? Why bother on a bait and switch. Women in South Dakota who are preggars are owned by the state. Lock, stock, and barrel. Once you give birth they will release you from your bondage. Maybe they’ll sell your baby for $10 like it’s 1952. You’d have to be a Native American in Sisseton for that one. Just interjecting a little South Dakota history. It typed up intersecting but thats illegal under Hillsdale rules so I changed it back.

  8. All Mammal 2023-03-01 13:47

    Ms. Beal- What does VP Harris have to do with Selective Service or body autonomy? If she made that uninformed comment way back when; how silly of her. What about the scads of blithering comments made by Beavis and Butthead during Justice Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings?

    After men are drafted, they usually receive compensation for surviving and they will have health care through the VA for life. After a woman is through with her service, if she survives, she is near bankrupt, and still owes at least 18 years of servitude and won’t be endowed with medals for her bravery and service. If she dies in the process, her children and spouse won’t receive benefits or get to attend a special burial. Her eldest child won’t look at a folded American flag and know his country honored his mother’s sacrifice. I don’t see the quid pro quo in the female’s situation like I do with the male’s.

    Women definitely have less body autonomy than men. Just one example is there are no laws threatening arrest when a guy decides to have a bothersome/deadly/debilitating/disfiguring/painful tumor/parasite removed. A woman is left with far fewer options when she is in the same predicament.

  9. Mark Anderson 2023-03-01 16:04

    All Mammal and e platypus onion. Down in Florida they refer to Kamala Harris as a whore so at least Ms. Beal is doing the Maga lite thing. They have to attack whomever they believe is a potential candidate. Right now their working on Buttigieg. They had at least 7 committees working over Hillary and Benghazi. It’s what they do. Democrats need to slog it out with them instead of just doing good governance. Ignore Ms Obama and take the low road.

  10. Arlo Blundt 2023-03-01 16:54

    Mark…you can’t take a lower road than the MAGA’s …absolutely Subterrainian.

  11. Donna Shipman 2023-03-01 17:01

    So to all you pro choice people. If a woman wants to have sex be responsible safe sex is best and prevents unwanted babies from being conceived. If she can’t do that abortion should not be an option. It is murder no matter how you want to think about it. I know GOD is no longer considered as part of our lives but I pray he removes the blinders on all who doubt his existence. As far as pronouns go GOD created 2 genders man and woman if you think 🤔 there are any others you should have a little talk with Jesus. May GOD THE FATHER spare you the judgement he created for Lucifer and his angels.

  12. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2023-03-01 17:28

    Donna, I get the feeling we’ve covered these abortion points before, but:

    1. It’s not murder. You don’t think so. You aren’t advocating for giving women who abort their pregnancies life in prison or the electric chair like we do to actual murderers.

    2. How is the state to know whether a woman had responsible safe sex or not? You’re the big-government advocate, while I’m the real conservative on this issue: our sex lives are none of the government’s business.

    3. God is not relevant to governing a pluralistic secular democracy with a separation between church and state. You are attempting to impose by law your religious belief. Nuts to that.

  13. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2023-03-01 17:29

    As for pronouns, Donna, did you read this Republican-sponsored bill? Do you know what it’s about?

  14. e platypus onion 2023-03-01 17:37

    How does forcing women to carry an unwanted parasite, against her will, empower women? That has to be the stoopidest argument I have ever encountered from nut jobs. You aren’t pro-life. You are pro slavery.

  15. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2023-03-01 17:52

    Anne, yes, South Dakota’s radical abortion ban, driven by SDRTL’s abortion absolutism, means women have less bodily autonomy than men. If women become pregnant, the state gets to intrude on their personal medical decisions, subordinating women to the service of another entity. Men face no comparable subjugation.

  16. Mark Anderson 2023-03-01 18:05

    Donna Shipman, could you explain to me why your God murders ( by your standard) more 1st trimesters than all the abortion clinics in the world. God’s rate is worse than fertility clinics who toss them out all the time. Really if he can’t due any better than that he should retire and let The Holy Ghost take over or Jesus who’s been waiting for over two thousand years for the job.

  17. Bob Newland 2023-03-01 18:16

    Donna, any time your god wants to stop abortions, she can drown all of us. There is precedent.

  18. bearcreekbat 2023-03-01 18:30

    Murder is a crime defined by South Dakota statutes. For most abortions Cory is mistaken and Donna Shipman is right. Since almost all abortions are now prohibited by current South Dakota law, all of these prohibited abortions are defined by law as “murder no matter how you want to think about it.”

    And, contrary to Cory’s suggestion, Donna Shipman also presumably recognizes that because unauthorized abortions are classified as murder under South Dakota law any jury now has been given the power to require the State to kill any woman convicted of this type of murder, and to kill any doctor, friend, family member or any one else that aids, abets or advises the woman in obtaining the ununauthorized abortion. Thus, there is no need for Donna to be “advocating for giving women who abort their pregnancies life in prison or the electric chair like we do to actual murderers.” It is a done deal in South Dakota.

    Cory is correct, however, that where an abortion is authorized by law, such as to save the life of the mother, that type of abortion is not murder under SD law. Thus, the State can only kill the woman if her life wasn’t first in danger.

    I have previously cited here on DFP all relevant statutes and provided analysis that no one has shown to be incorrect. Long time lawyer Jay Schultz also published his analysis in the SD Standard reaching the same conclusion:

    https://www.sdstandardnow.com/home/ignorance-of-the-ban-on-most-abortions-in-south-dakota-can-get-you-killed

  19. larry kurtz 2023-03-01 18:39

    Oh bat, you’re so literal.

    3. Rich women have full reproductive rights while women at the lower income margins suffer chilling effects on those rights. Women in Texas, Wyoming and South Dakota who can afford it simply jump on a plane and fly to Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Denver or elsewhere for their procedures. Imagine a woman on the Standing Rock or Pine Ridge doing that.

    11. States that ban women from going out of state for their procedures or medications are violating the Commerce Clause enumerated in the United States Constitution.

  20. Richard Schriever 2023-03-01 18:50

    larry, Your query as to the workings and quirks of the God thing led me to recall a recent conversation I had with someone who has a Noah’s Ark fetish. What’s up with God killing all those other to the single pairs of all the animals of Earth? Were they too unredeemable sinners? And what’s the deal with all the aquatic life being spared?

  21. grudznick 2023-03-01 18:52

    Ms. Shipman, your god drowned in a bowl of cereal.

  22. larry kurtz 2023-03-01 19:01

    MAGA people are praying for the flood more every day. They’re going to end as much life on Earth as they possibly can so they can say “I told you so.”

  23. Donald Pay 2023-03-01 19:17

    Anne, A rudimentary knowledge of South Dakota history and a legal theory called originalism is required to understand that when the South Dakota voters approved those sections of the Constitution, women could not vote, let alone hold those offices and exercise those powers. When they use male signifying pronouns they meant male persons.

  24. DaveFN 2023-03-01 21:09

    No matter what one’s solution to the predicament of their “thrownness” (Heidegger’s Geworfenheit) into this world—be the solution one side of the dominant binary of male/female or any of the other various options presented by society—there is always a price to pay for that “presumed” solution.

    In this sense autonomy is nothing but imagined for it never exists other than in the mind—and in political discourse which attempts to reify it.

  25. grudznick 2023-03-01 21:25

    What? Mr. Anderson is another out-of-stater? I’m so disappointed that a voice of reason is yet another OOSNC.

  26. Edwin Arndt 2023-03-01 21:43

    All Mammal, please say that you are not equating a child to
    a parasite. Please, I beg you, make that clarification.

  27. grudznick 2023-03-01 21:49

    Mr. Schriever at 18:50 makes grudznick and his close personal friend Lar lie awake at night, pondering these very good questions.

    Lest some of your libbie minds wander, Lar and I lie in different beds, like in I love Lucy/Lar, a popular show back in the day before most of your daddies even had colored TeeVees.

  28. DaveFN 2023-03-02 00:34

    Edwin Arndt

    Take as s working definition of parasite “an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other’s expense.”

    Focus on the “at the other’s expense.”

    To what conclusion do you come? Depends, does it not, on how you calculate expense, on the particular cost/benefit system used?

  29. DaveFN 2023-03-02 00:44

    …to be succinct, what is not an expense for some is, on the other hand, may be an unbearable expense for others.

    One size does not fit all.

  30. e platypus onion 2023-03-02 08:35

    Not a single birth control device is ever 100% effective. Forcing rape and incest victims to be a host to a parasite in double or more the punishment of being raped or a victim of incest. Passionate conservatism s a triple oxymoron at least.

    Then we get to the point where unwanted parasites are forced to be born, but where is the financial help and loving homes for all the unwanteds? You magats should, by law, be forced to adopt every fetus forced to be born, no exceptions.

    Better yet, you kristian hypocrites need to be smited with your own jawbones for making a mockery of your purported lord and saviour.

  31. Edwin Arndt 2023-03-02 09:11

    DaveFN
    A child in the womb of a woman is most definitely not of
    another species. Focus on species. Be a bit more careful
    in what you write.

  32. larry kurtz 2023-03-02 09:23

    8. A blastocyst is no more an unborn child than it is an unborn grandparent.

  33. Edwin Arndt 2023-03-02 09:41

    Larry, all grandparents were at one time unborn.

  34. larry kurtz 2023-03-02 09:50

    6. No foetus in the United States has any civil rights. Republicans preach civil rights for human blastocysts but deny the protections of the First, Fourth and Ninth Amendments to people who enjoy cannabis.

  35. All Mammal 2023-03-02 10:16

    No, Mr. Arndt. I would never. We are supposed to be looking out for each other, not dwelling on horrible thoughts of merrily terminating late term pregnancies when there is a discernible human being already formed. That is a morbid urban legend. In reality, the vast majority of abortion never deals with two distinct entities. She chooses to remain singular by inducing the body’s standard menstruation. Bottom line is abortion sucks and the decision sucks and we should hope to never be in those shoes and we should not make that situation worse for the people walking in such unfortunate shoes by judging them. You will get to decide when you miss your period.

  36. Edwin Arndt 2023-03-02 10:28

    Thank you.
    Abortion seems to generate a lot of discussion.

  37. Richard Schriever 2023-03-02 10:50

    Dave FN, “…..other various options presented by society.”?? You mean other options presented by GENETICS. “Society” is only able to recognize or not, not to create..

  38. Richard Schriever 2023-03-02 10:59

    Edwin Arndt – kindly cease conflating a “child” (roughly ages 2-5), with one of the other 7 (seven) stages of human development. The human in the womb 100% and EXCLUSIVELY dependent on another human being for EVERY bit of its existence, is a “pre-natal” one, and there are at least 3 substages to that stage. The human at birth (and separation from developmental dependency – yes like a parasite is) from its mother human (hopefully a fully adult one) is an infant for about a year and transitions quickly into being a toddler.

    The characterization of the first three stages of human development as being “a child” is nothing more to political propagandistic disinformation.

  39. e platypus onion 2023-03-02 11:19

    Parasite…
    : an organism living in, on, or with another organism in order to obtain nutrients, grow, or multiply often in a state that directly or indirectly harms the host (see HOST entry 3 sense 2a)
    Now the death of its host is certainly a setback to any parasite. To some (like the tapeworm) it is fatal; but smarter ones (like the louse) simply go off in search of a new host.
    —David Jones

  40. DaveFN 2023-03-02 22:34

    Edwin Arndt

    Where did I mention species? Are you not reading/projecting between the lines in what I wrote?

  41. Edwin Arndt 2023-03-02 22:46

    DaveFN, go back and read your comment at 00:34.

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