By Mary Lou Greenberg
In these final days before Tuesday’s election, the battle over the most restrictive abortion ban in the country is intensifying. What happens here in South Dakota will have big ramifications for the entire country and for Roe itself, the 1973 Supreme court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
If people vote to keep Referred Law 6 that prohibits all
abortions except to prevent the death of the woman, it will be a big
victory for the fascist theocrats. If this happens, pro-choice forces
plan to take it to the courts where it will likely end up before the
Supreme Court. This law was written specifically to directly challenge
Roe, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, and will
provide an opportunity for the Court, now stacked with anti-abortion
justices led by Samuel Alito, to overturn Roe or further eviscerate it.
If voters reject the ban, the SD legislature will likely come up with a
similar law and the battle will begin again in the state.
On
the ground here, the fight around the law has created a highly
politicized atmosphere, and while a recent poll has shown that a
majority of voters are opposed to the ban, the area has been flooded
with anti-abortion signs and ads. Drivers coming into the downtown
section of the city Friday were faced with anti-abortion forces holding
huge “Yes on 6” signs at major intersections. Yard signs urging a “yes”
vote appeared all over the area in the last few weeks, and although you
can see a number of “No on 6” signs now, residents say many of their
friends and associates refuse to put the signs in their yards for fear
of harassment and being called “baby killers.” Some who have been
outspoken against the ban find many of their colleagues are supportive
but fearful of going public themselves.
This reminds me of the
situation faced by many abortion providers across the country who are
told by other physicians that they are glad someone is providing these
services but refuse to offer abortions themselves. And those who do
continue to provide abortions are increasingly harassed, assaulted and
even killed.
At a debate on Referred Law 6 at University of
Sioux Falls Wednesday night, one of the pro-ban speakers, Dr. Alan
Unruh (a chiropractor) called the physician who flies into the Planned
Parenthood clinic here a “rogue doctor” in an outrageous effort to
imply that this doctor was outside the pale of responsible medicine. In
reality, this doctor, and others like him/her across the country, are
heroes for continuing to provide reproductive choice for women despite
grave hardship and ongoing threats to themselves and their families.
As
it is, SD is one of the states with the most restrictions in the
country, including a 24-hour waiting period, mandatory couseling to
discourage the procedure, and parental notification for minors. There
is only one clinic in the state, Sioux Falls Planned Parenthood, that
offers abortions, and they do so only one day a week.
The Planned Parenthood clinic itself has been the scene of increasing
anti-abortion protests, and one college student who went to the clinic
for birth control pills told me antis attempt to videotape women going
in, take photos of their license plates, and then post the pictures on
a website, calling on people to identify the “baby killers.”
At
the Wednesday night debate, Unruh went on to lie about the reasons
women get abortions – he actually said, they get abortions because
“they can’t fit into their bikini.” He decried the lack of
“self-discipline,” and said unrestricted abortion and sex education
were a “formula to destroy America” and send it into a “moral
freefall.” In other words, sex outside heterosexual marriage and
procreation is what’s destroying the country.
The anti-abortion
side also blatently lied about the law itself, saying that it allows
women who’ve been raped to get Plan B, emergency conception that can
prevent pregnancy if taken shortly after unprotected sex. First, the
hypocrisy here is astounding as these are the very forces who have
campaigned against Plan B. Second, and most important, as the “No on 6”
side emphasized, Plan B must be taken within 72 hours to be most
effective. Even the it is not 100 percent effective, and women who
have been raped may be too traumatized in the immediate aftermath to
even think of getting it. Plus, pharmacists here can refuse to fill
prescriptions for emergency contraception, and about half the
pharmacies don’t dispense it.
Letters to the editor in the Argus
Leader show the intensity of the struggle. Letters from anti-abortion
readers predominate, citing Biblical references and calling on women to
trust in God and Jesus. The pro-choice side holds its own, however, and
one letter in Friday’s paper graphically painted a picture of what the
situation will be if the abortion ban is upheld. He wrote:
“One
of the first autopsies I performed when I arrived in Sioux Falls in
1966 was on a 16-year-old girl who died of infection and a perforated
uterus, again the result of a locally performjed, illegal back-alley
abortion…Since desperate women who wish to end a pregnancy will find
a way to do so, they should have a way to do so in a safe and clean
environment that does not place their lives in jeopardy. Please vote
“no” on Referred Law 6.”
Previous Reports from South Dakota: