When he addressed the Legislature on opening day of the 2026 Session, Governor Larry Rhoden vowed to work with legislators and Attorney General Marty Jackley “on legislation to stop abortion pills from coming into South Dakota.” But after three weeks of legislating, the only abortion-related bill in the hopper is House Bill 1212, a that would put women who get abortions, by pill or other means, on trial for murder.
South Dakota’s draconian abortion restrictions include a stay-out-of-jail card for pregnant women: “A female who undergoes an unlawful abortion, as set forth in § 22-17-5.1, may not be held criminally liable for the abortion” [SDCL 22-17-5.2]. Legislators added that immunity in 2023 [HB 1220], after the Dobbs court essentially banned all abortions in South Dakota, over the objection of only eight of the most radical right-wingnuts in the Legislature. Yesterday, one of those radical objectors, Representative Tony Randolph (R-35/Rapid City), filed HB 1212 to repeal that immunity [Section 4]. HB 1212 also repeals the classification of fetal homicide as a crime distinct from and warranting a lesser punishment than regular homicide [Section 3] and applies South Dakota’s homicide statutes the same to unborn children as to actual born people [Section 2]. Abortion could thus be charged as a capital offense.
The only exemption from prosecution that HB 1212 leaves for pregnant women and health care providers is for “unintentional death of an unborn child resulting from (1) Lifesaving procedures undertaken to preserve the life of a pregnant mother, if accompanied by reasonable and available steps to preserve the life of the mother’s unborn child; or (2) A spontaneous miscarriage” [Section 2]. Read that language carefully: HB 1212 does not allow an abortion to save the life of a mother. It only excuses the death of a fetus that results from other lifesaving procedures that weren’t intended to terminate the pregnancy and that include active efforts to keep the fetus alive.
Section 2 says this provision supersedes any other abortion laws, including SDCL 22-17-5.1, which supposedly allows abortions to save pregnant women’s lives.
The net effect of HB 1212 is to create the possibility that if a woman undergoes an abortion to save her own life, the state may take her life away.
It’s surprising that, in an election year with hot Republican primaries, we haven’t seen more abortion posturing from Rhoden, Jackley, and other candidates eager for right-wing money and cred. But this first abortion bill of the Session is a real killer.
What a horrible state South Dakota has become.
Once again, frustrated Republicans turn their attention to all things sexual. They just can’t seem to stay out of your bedroom, bathroom, underwear, vagina, uterus… They seem a little kinky to me. MYOB!!!
I assume life insurance policies can then be taken out on fertilized eggs?
Gosh, their going for the women’s vote. Keep it up boys, viagra will help even though it’s much more dangerous than misoprostol.
As I pointed out a few years back, when Roe was overruled SD law actually classified an unlawful abortion as 1st degree murder, with mandatory life or death as the only available punishment. Likewise the fetal homicide statute referenced by Randolph doesn’t apply to abortions, only non-consensual fetal killing. The legislature added a provision to that statute to clarify and protect mothers, which appears to be why Randolph wants it repealed.
Randolph’s proposed law does clarify the 1st degree murder penalty somewhat. Now it not only covers all doctors, nurses, friends and family, and anyone else assisting the pregnant woman, it covers the woman too. Equal protection (punishment) under the law?
And why shouldn’t the government be able to kill anyone they want at anytime they want, whether alleged drug dealers, protesters, and women who need their pregnancies terminated.
Its sadly ironic that Randolph’s bill apparently has a limited exception to exclude women whose lives are in danger absent an abortion. He wants to save these women’s lives but kill any woman that life is not in danger?
No one in your leg has had an original idea in decades. Hash Hash Re-Hash repeat
Little wonder why SD is among the worst five states for innovation skills.
If a mother dies giving birth, does the newly born then stand trial for murder?
O, that’s an idea!
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. Republicans is drive the abolition of women’s rights because they’re wedded to the Great Replacement Hypothesis. But, 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 tapping or 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.
Excellent comments!
No exceptions for rape or incest? I faintly remember Hillary Clinton predicting this, and next will be “controlling” birth control. While at the same time, erectile dysfunction meds have increased in sales, become easier to get, and are so inexpensive.
It’s like …. recreational sex for who? The guys get pumped up on Viagra while the gals are worried their pills or devices may not work.
I doubt this will pass in this form. Look at the names on it. Normally an anti-abortion bill would have most of the Republicans on it. But, it could be used as a vehicile for some other sort of restriction on reproductive rights.
Excellent commentary, Thank you all.
VM, no exceptions. Rep. Randolph would deem abortion murder in every case. The exception for saving the life of the mother does not apply to an intentional abortion; it only applies to fetal death incidental to other maternal-life-saving measures and despite active efforts to save the fetus’s life.
Voting places and businesses should be allowed to ban obese people like Powers and his wife, airlines and taxi services should charge more for fat people. Scales and Body Mass Index stations should be outside stores where food is sold. Businesses with buffets should have scales at the door and anyone with a BMI over 23 will pay an additional $1.00 for every whole number above that. Food stores should have scales at tills that add surcharges according to BMIs. Gas stations should have scales that determine price per gallon according to BMI unless you have documentation in your debit/credit card updated by your doctor that you’re on a weight reduction regimen.