Now that the Trump Court has allowed South Dakota to ban pretty much all abortions, the abortion lobby has had a pretty dull 2026 Legislative Session. They tried to send women to prison for having abortion with House Bill 1212, but that measure died in committee (though Representatives Andera, Baxter, Garcia, and Schaefbauer voted for charging their fellow women with capital murder).
Radical right-wing Representative Bethany Soye (R-9/Sioux Falls) floated House Bill 1257 to expand the definition of abortion to include “administering, prescribing, providing, selling, or using any drug, medicine, or other substance, or providing, selling, or using any device or instrument, with the intent to terminate a clinically diagnosable pregnancy, including the elimination of one or more unborn children in a multifetal pregnancy, with knowledge that the termination by those means will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of the unborn child….”
Selling—so that’s kind of like saying murder includes selling the gun that a kid uses to shoot up a school, right? (Stay tuned: I’ll have a separate post on that point.)
Representative Leslie Heinemann (R-25/Flandreau), who took over as prime sponsor from Soye, asked House State Affairs to reel that definition back to its current simple line—”the intentional termination of the life of a human being in the uterus”—and instead simply clarify what the term abortion does not include:
(a) Medical treatment that is provided to a pregnant female and results in the accidental or unintentional death of the unborn child;
(b) Treatment to resolve a miscarriage;
(c) The treatment or removal of an ectopic pregnancy;
(d) The removal from the uterus of a deceased unborn child; or
(e) Any medical procedure performed for the purpose of saving the life or preserving the health of the unborn child;… [2026 House Bill 1257, excerpt from Section 2, as amended by House State Affairs, 2026.02.23].
Note that these proposed exemptions do not include the vast array of conditions in which terminating a pregnancy is medically necessary. The exceptions do not indicate concern for mothers’ health. HB 1257 leaves in place the language in South Dakota’s abortion ban, SDCL 22-12-5.1, that says the only condition under which abortion is not a felony is when “there is appropriate and reasonable medical judgment that performance of an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant female.”
The American Civil Liberties Union smells the big-government misogyny:
When urgent care is delayed in obstetrics, hemorrhage worsens. Infection spreads. Organs fail. No patient should have to wait for their provider to parse through legalese during a medical emergency.
This is not health care. This is putting people’s lives at risk in service of a political agenda. And that’s why House Bill 1257, legislation that claims to clarify the “medical emergency” exception to South Dakota’s near-total abortion ban, is so dangerous and must be stopped.
Deeply private, personal and unique decisions about abortion should not be made by politicians but be made by pregnant people in consultation with their doctors – who should be able to treat their patients according to their best medical judgement. Inserting unclear and non-medical terminology into law will cause uncertainty for providers and will inevitably cause delays in care.
Abortion shouldn’t be a political issue. It’s a health care issue that has been deeply politicized to the detriment of so many people across South Dakota.
The call to clarify the exceptions to South Dakota’s extreme abortion ban just proves that one-size-fits-all laws don’t work. In order for our laws to address all the possible circumstances that someone who is pregnant might face, we need to repeal the total abortion ban and make access to medical care the rule, not the exception [ACLU of South Dakota, “‘Medical Emergency’ Exceptions Put Lives at Risk,” action alert, 2026.03.02].
HB 1257 does nothing to restore women’s choice or medical safety in pregnancy; enact HB 1257, and pregnant South Dakota women will still be forced to carry any viable pregnancy to term. The anti-abortion fanatics aren’t proposing to make life much worse for South Dakota women… because in terms of reproductive freedom, things are about as bad as they can get.