Mayday Health is advertising its information about reproductive health services at some South Dakota gas stations:
Starting Monday, Dec. 8, 30 gas stations in 20 South Dakota cities will have abortion pill advertisements as a part of Mayday Health’s effort to spread information about the pills and abortion options.
The signs, posted above gas pumps, read “Pregnant? Don’t want to be?” with a link to the organization’s website.
“We’re putting up ads at gas stations because we think that everyone deserves access to accurate medical information, and gas stations are great places to spread information,” [said] Executive Director Liv Raisner… [Gracie Terrall and Eric Mayer, “Abortion Pill Ads Hit South Dakota Gas Stations,” KELO-TV, updated 2025.12.09].
South Dakota Republicans are again demonstrating their hatred of free speech by threatening to take the advertisers to court:
Today, Governor Larry Rhoden urged Attorney General Marty Jackley to investigate a new abortion ad campaign, which appears to conflict with South Dakota’s proud pro-life stance. He made this request in a letter, which you can find here. The Attorney General quickly agreed to pursue the investigation.
“South Dakota has the most pro-life laws in the nation – I am proud of that fact,” wrote Governor Larry Rhoden. “This advertising campaign threatens the lives of children yet to be born in our state, and it also threatens the health of South Dakota mothers, as chemical abortions are four times as likely to cause a mother to end up in the emergency room.”
…Mayday Health is advertising abortion pills at 30 gas stations in 20 South Dakota cities. This campaign is potentially in violation of South Dakota’s pro-life laws, including SDCL 22-17-5.1 and 36-4-8, or could even be a deceptive trade practice.
“All ad campaigns, no matter what the issue, need to follow state laws and fair trade practices,” said Attorney General Marty Jackley. “We will review these ads and determine if any laws have been broken. If laws have been broken, we will take appropriate action” [Governor Larry Rhoden, press release, 2025.12.09].
First, medically speaking, Governor Rhoden is lying about abortion pills and emergency room visits. His claim about heightened risk of emergency room visits comes from discredited research from anti-abortion activists who put their agenda above rigorous, reliable science.
Second, the laws Rhoden cites don’t affect Mayday Health’s ads.
SDCL 22-17-5.1 says you can’t administer, prescribe, or procure abortion services for any pregnant woman unless the pregnancy is going to kill the woman. Mayday Health’s ad does not administer, prescribe, or procure anything. It simply tells pregnant women (and other interested gas station customers) where they can learn about abortion, morning-after pills, birth control, and gender-affirming care. They aren’t performing abortions. They aren’t handing out mifepristone. They aren’t breaking the abortion ban.
SDCL 36-4-8 says you can’t practice medicine without a state license, and if you have a license, you can’t prescribe medicine to induce medical abortions. Mayday Health isn’t practicing medicine any more than Governor Rhoden is when he lies about the risks of abortion pills or than I am when I provide links correcting Rhoden’s bunk. Mayday Health isn’t breaking that law.
SDCL Chapter 37-24 bans deceptive practices in trade—i.e., selling things. Mayday Health doesn’t appear to be selling anything; they just give people information about where they can buy goods and services. And unlike Governor Rhoden, Mayday Health isn’t lying about anything. Mayday Health doesn’t appear to be committing any of the deceptive practices listed under SDCL 37-24-6.
Rhoden and Jackley are trying to scare Mayday Health away from educating South Dakota women about reproductive choice. But don’t expect Jackley to come up with any case against these non-profit educators that will hold up in court.
Now if only we had a chapter on deceptive political practices under which we could charge Rhoden and Jackley the next time they claim to support free speech.
Been through this before, many times. My wife was educational director at Planned Parenthood for over 20 years until they foolishly ended education. Lies like the governors need to be pointed out immediately and strongly.
Taking away a woman’s rights is an important agenda for the right. You would think the women in the Republican party would stop serving the coffee and get out. Nancy Mace, Elise Stefanik, and of course Marjorie Taylor Green have come around. Nikki Haley should drop out of the racist anti woman party. She must think she can persevere, somehow but that’s not going to happen.
1. Abortion is health care and a pregnant woman is the patient.
2. Ectopic pregnancies kill women.
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.
4. South Dakota’s repeated attempts to restrict access to medical care are not only mean-spirited, they’re discriminatory anti-choice extremism.
5. “Pro-life” is simply code for white people breeding. The extreme white wing of the Republican Party is driving the abolition of women’s rights because they’re wedded to the Great Replacement Hypothesis. African-Americans terminate pregnancies at about the same per capita rate as white people do but don’t take their jobs. Latinas, however, have fewer abortions per capita so the extreme white wing laments it’s hemorrhaging jobs to Latinos.
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.
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.
8. A blastocyst is no more an unborn child than it is an unborn grandparent. Foetal development is undefined in US Constitutional law so if someone calls it a baby that’s an opinion and not a legal definition.
9. There is no foetal heartbeat until at least ten weeks into a pregnancy. What an ultrasound “hears” at six weeks are cells beginning to build a cardiac system entirely dependent on amniotic fluid produced by a person with actual civil rights.
10. States that ban or punish women from going out of state for their procedures or medications is government overreach and are violating the Commerce Clause enumerated in the United States Constitution.
11. One fifth of all pregnancies end in miscarriage or as some would call God working in mysterious ways but when a person with a free will chooses to terminate a pregnancy the creator doesn’t condone that decision? How does that work?
12. Only 1% of abortions occur in the third trimester and are performed for medical reasons such as foetal anomalies or maternal life endangerment.
13. It’s all related: a medical industry oligopoly, gender dysphoria, polluted waterways, subsidized agriculture, absence of medical insurance, cancer and an Earth hating legislature on the dole. But, applaud the nutball Republican efforts diverting attention from the party’s culture of corruption where murders and their covers up are commonplace by clogging the legislative session with christianic religionist argle-bargle.
This is a taxpayer-funded virtue signaling stunt of two political candidates. The target audience is the anti-abortion crowd. They do have to suck up to the church ladies and the fake Chiristian ministers, you know. Janklow did something similar, bringing charges against Ben Munson for an abortion he performed back in the 1970s. It’s an old Republican election gimmick. They will try to find some technical violation of the law to signal they are serious (yes they are!) about people learning anything about ending a pregnancy, let alone obtaining one.
It’s sickening when politicians think they can bend the law in order to curry political favor and campaign donations. Just watch for the campaign ads from the Rhonden and Jackley campaigns on this issue, because they did this for money,
Another way to approach this is to point out the medical fact that mifepristone is much safer than sidenafil. So is the abortion pill is banned both must be banned. Its logical and true. So you Viagra legislators do your duty. The abortion pill is ten times safer than your little blue pill. Digest that boys.
There seems to be something about Republicans that they want to be in your doctor’s office, bedroom, bathroom, locker room, underwear… They sound like a very repressed group. Maybe these “concerned individuals” could start by MINDING THEIR OWN DAMN BUSINESS!
I wonder if it might be politically beneficial for Jackley to charge the advertiser as an co-conspirator or accessory to a 1st degree murder charge, or for encouraging or attempting 1st degree murder. For a full discussion of such a possibly see the post and the extensive analytic comments at:
https://dakotafreepress.com/2022/07/28/attorney-sd-law-may-allow-murder-charge-against-woman-who-aborts-pregnancy-but-conviction-unlikely/
While, as attorney Davis and Cory point out at the above link, obtaining a final conviction might be difficult, but why would that matter if making such a charge might help Jackley or Rhoden achieve their next political ambition?
The CLI and EPPC studies’ methodology overstates risks by including ER visits that are precautionary or unrelated to complications, and by drawing from Medicaid claims data that does not reflect the broader population.
The discrepancy lies in data sources and interpretation: insurance claims vs. clinical trials.
ps … Medicaid Claims Data (Charlotte Lozier Institute, EPPC)
Captures real-world outcomes across a broad population, including women with underlying health conditions.
ER visits are logged if a woman seeks care for any reason after abortion — even precautionary visits or unrelated issues.
Coding practices may classify follow-up care as “complications,” inflating rates.
Data show higher ER utilization: CLI found chemical abortion ER visits rose 500% between 2002–2015, while surgical abortion ER visits stayed flat.
According to google research, less than 5% of abortions performed are for strictly
medical reasons. Why do so many work so hard to kill babies? Do you not
realize that the future of the human race depends on women having babies?
Theodore Roosevelt killed babies. Harry Truman killed babies. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon killed babies. William Calley killed babies. Idi Amin and Pol Pot killed babies. Blastocysts are not babies.
Bip the Clown killed babies, Lar. I’m just sayin…
Gee Mr. Arndt , if they want them.
DonOld Trump, BB Netanyahu and Vlad the Impaler are killing babies as this is being typed.
@Edwin … Here’s a fact-based breakdown of what’s actually known — and where your statement goes wrong:
1. It’s true that only a small minority of abortions are for medical or life-saving reasons
Data from multiple state reporting systems shows that abortions performed specifically because of rape, incest, serious fetal abnormality, or to preserve the woman’s life or health collectively account for a small percentage (typically well under 5%) of reported abortions in the United States when those specific reasons are tracked. 
However, that statistic doesn’t mean the remaining 95% are all “just to kill babies” — and here’s why that framing is misleading.
2. Most abortions are sought for social, economic, or life-circumstance reasons
Research that asks people why they choose abortion finds that the vast majority of respondents cite reasons such as:
• not being financially prepared
• not planning to have a child at that time
• partner/relationship issues
• already having children to care for
• timing and life stability concerns
These are not strictly “medical” reasons, but they are real life factors that influence people’s health, well-being, and ability to parent. For example, one large study found that financial and life circumstances were the most frequently cited reasons. 
3. “Medical reasons” isn’t the same as “only good reasons”
When the data says “less than 5% are for medical reasons,” it’s referring to specific categories tracked in official reports (like rape/incest, fetal anomaly, or maternal life threat). 
That doesn’t capture the full complexity of why individuals seek abortion — especially:
• mental health concerns
• inability to care for a child
• socioeconomic hardship
• existing family responsibilities
Studies that ask about personal reasons often show these non-medical factors are the dominant drivers — and these reasons can be deeply tied to health, safety, and life outcomes.
4. The conclusion “why do so many work so hard to kill babies” is a value judgment, not a factual conclusion
***Language like “kill babies” is a moral or ideological framing, not a neutral description of abortion as a medical or public-health event. Whether an abortion is “good,” “bad,” “necessary,” or “murder” depends on one’s ethical, religious, or philosophical beliefs — not on the basic facts about how, why, or when abortions are performed.
🧠 5. On the claim about the human future
The idea that the future of the human race depends on women having babies is also a philosophical or ethical position, not a demographic or medical fact. Population trends are influenced by many factors — including fertility rates, immigration, economic conditions, and social policy — and not all societies view abortion restrictions as a solution to demographic change.
You are important, Edwin and so are your personal opinions. Important to you, that is.
Merry Christmas 🎄
Merry Christmas to you, also, Porter. There are those of us who
think that if you are not ready to raise a child you should not be
having sex.
This comment is rather late but I have been busy.
There are those of us who believe that if you can’t afford to live you probably won’t.