South Dakota's Anti-Choice Charge

When it comes to denying women access to abortions, it's hard to beat South Dakota.

• Like several other states, South Dakota has a mandatory delay law, requiring a woman to wait 24 hours before she can get an abortion.
• In March, South Dakota enacted restrictions that force doctors to read to women seeking abortions state-scripted information that is medically inaccurate and infused with ideology. The law also requires women to sign the scripts to certify that they understand them. Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota (PPMNS) is currently challenging the law in court.
• The law in South Dakota also requires minors to notify a parent before getting an abortion.
• Earlier this year, the state passed a "trigger bill," that will immediately ban all abortions, except to save the life of the woman, if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned.

On top of all these restrictions, there is also the fact that the PPMNS Sioux Falls health center is the only generally available abortion provider in the entire state of South Dakota.

The South Dakota Task Force

On Friday, December 9, the 17-member South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion held its final meeting and made recommendations that encourage the state to restrict abortion further. Advocating for a total ban, but recognizing that it cannot yet be implemented, the task force offered 14 legislative proposals that it would like to see the state pass, including

• an amendment to the state constitution that gives the "unborn child, from the moment of conception," the same protections "a child receives after birth"
• a requirement that a pregnant woman receives counseling at a "pregnancy care center that does not perform abortions" before she is allowed to make an appointment at an abortion clinic
• a requirement that a pregnant woman be shown a "quality ultrasound image of her unborn child" before an abortion is performed

A majority of the task force members -- appointed by South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds, the Speaker of the South Dakota House, and the South Dakota Senate President Pro Tempore -- were staunchly anti-choice. "My perception is that no one was appointed without the person appointing them knowing [what] their position [on abortion] was," says Maria Bell, MD, a member of the pro-choice minority in the task force who served as vice-chair.

Kate Looby, South Dakota state director of PPMNS, who also served on the task force, says that there were approximately 10 members who were anti-choice, six who were pro-choice, and the chair of the task force, who was considered "moderate," but voted mostly with the pro-choice side. According to Looby, two of the pro-choice members never showed up to any meetings. She knows that at least one felt serving on the task force was a waste of time.

Exercise in Futility

The final meeting was supposed to be a time for members to decide what to put in the report and what recommendations to make. But at the start of the meeting, members were asked to approve a report that had already been written.

The report states, "... there are new facts and appreciations of those facts, as discussed in this Report, that disprove many factual assumptions made by the [Supreme] Court in Roe v. Wade, requiring that the Supreme Court reconsider its Roe decision."

But according to Sarah Stoesz, president and CEO of PPMNS, facts were the one thing this task force was not eager to embrace. Says Stoesz, "In a shameful disregard of irrefutable medical and scientific data, many task force members ignored any fact that contradicted their own personal beliefs, and refused to allow any data that they disapproved of to be included in a final report to the legislature."

Echoing Stoesz's concerns, Looby recalls the efforts of Bell to include medical information in the report proving that there is no connection between breast cancer and abortion. The motion was voted down. Instead, the report states, "The question concerning whether abortion causes an increased risk for breast cancer cannot be answered by this Task Force based on the record. However, the subject is of vital importance, and the reasons to suspect such a connection sufficiently sound, that we conclude that further study of this topic is justified and needed."