South Dakota will have ballot initiative before voters in November
The proposed amendment would restore Roe's protections, but some activists have said it wouldn't go far enough
In South Dakota, activists won by getting a ballot initiative before voters after submitting enough signatures to qualify.
The amendment, which protects abortion access in the first two trimesters and allows bans after that mark, has been criticized by feminist leaders and thinkers who wanted amendments not to be based on the viability framework put forth by Roe v. Wade. Rick Weiland, leader of Dakotans for Health, behind the amendment, told me that he thought passing a law like New York’s in that commonwealth would be impractical.
I spoke with Weiland again to discuss what his group intends to do to garner support for the amendment. This would be a victory, even if people based in more liberal states considered it imperfect.
“They don't want the people to decide,” Weiland said. “They don't want to give the people of South Dakota an opportunity to weigh in on this issue because they've done it in the past, and they've rejected efforts in the past to restrict access to reproductive health care, including abortion.
“If this gets on the ballot, it's going to pass, and we'll go from being the most restrictive state in the country to having a reasonable reconstruction or reinstatement of Roe v. Wade.”
They submitted 55,000 signatures to the South Dakota Secretary of State. They only needed 35,000.
The chief opposition comes from the Life Defense Fund, led by State Rep. Jon Hansen and Leslee Unruh. Weiland said that the organization had sought to stop his volunteers and staffers from getting signatures by telling those who signed that they were killing babies.
“It just made for an unpleasant experience because they're so they've been so radicalized by this this this idea of restoring Roe v Wade, being over the line–too radical, too extreme for South Dakota,” Weiland said.
It’s worth noting that some of the organizations that have protested are fairly mainstream ones. Planned Parenthood North Central States leaders criticized it. So did the ACLU of South Dakota.
As many of my readers know, the debate over wording amendments based on the viability threshold has divided activists. Many in areas outside New York say that it wouldn’t be possible for them to reach the ceiling, instead of the floor, that activists have sought in establishing protections for abortion access.
Weiland characterized his position as centrist.
“It's interesting because we've been getting hit from the left and from the right, (who say) we go too far. From the left, we don't go far enough. It's been an interesting place to be. You feel like you must be doing something right when you're getting attacked from both extremes of the effort.”