Why Won't South Dakota Ban Abortion?

The New Republic: Why One Of The Most Pro-Life States In The Country Ended Up Voting Against Banning Abortion - Twice.

(The New Republic)  This column was written by Denise Ross.

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South Dakota state legislator Larry Rhoden is as loyal a pro-life crusader as you are likely to find in the Rushmore state. Rhoden worked enthusiastically in 2004 to pass a state bill that would ban nearly all abortions. When that failed, he continued to push the issue--helping to form an abortion task force that would give legitimacy to the ban effort, and helped lead the efforts on another abortion ban bill that passed the legislature but failed when referred to a statewide vote as a ballot initiative in 2006. He even lent his support to the most recent incarnation--a ban including exceptions for rape and incest--that failed as a ballot initiative again this past Election Day.

But after two defeats at the ballot box, the conservative Republican is ready to throw in the towel. "I would question the wisdom of anybody that wanted to bring it forward again," says Rhoden, who makes his living as a rancher in the sparsely populated western corner of the state. His personal view on abortion hasn't changed, but as a policy-maker, Rhoden makes it plain that he wants no part of any more abortion bans. How did South Dakota--a state frequently described as "the most pro-life in the country"--become such hostile terrain for anti-abortion efforts?

In 2004, South Dakota seemed the ideal state from which anti-abortion activists could launch a head-on challenge to Roe v. Wade. Politically, it seemed unobjectionable. The South Dakota Legislature had already passed a steady stream of laws since Roe to make abortions increasingly difficult to obtain: The state requires parental notification for minors, limits elective abortions to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and provides legal protection for doctors and hospitals that opt not to provide abortions. (State law also covers pharmacists who decline to dispense birth control with a "conscience clause.") The majority of South Dakotans have identified themselves in polls as "pro-life," and politicians are well advised to do so as well. At the state's lone abortion clinic in Sioux Falls, Planned Parenthood flies doctors in from Minnesota to perform the procedure, as none of South Dakota's physicians do elective abortions.

In 2004 and 2006, lawmakers supported a ban--the 2006 ban passed 47 to 22 in the House, 23 to 12 in the Senate--at least in part because they feared their constituency would boot them for voting against it. But then in 2006, voters turned back the ban, 55.57 percent to 44.43 percent, after opponents hammered the point that the ban lacked exceptions for rape or incest victims or to protect the health of the pregnant woman. So sponsors of the ban redid it for 2008 with exceptions included--a watered down version that, according the only publicly released poll of 2008, had narrowed the margin to a dead heat. Almost everybody predicted a nail-biter. But voters rejected that measure by an equally wide margin of 55.21 percent to 44.79 percent.

A variety of theories have emerged to explain why there has been such a divergence between the supposed public opposition to abortion and the actual outcome of recent votes. Some suggest that a "reverse Bradley effect" was the cause. Just as voters in the 1982 California governor's race are believed to have lied about their intent to vote for a black candidate, South Dakota voters may have lied about their support for an abortion ban. "There's a lot of public pressure to be anti-abortion," explains Marvin Buehner, a Rapid City OB-GYN and South Dakota's most outspoken physician against the abortion bans. Buehner had predicted voters would reject the 2008 ban, but narrowly. "People are more likely to answer the poll that they'll support [a ban]. Then they get into the ballot booth and decide they just can't vote for something like that."

Another explanation that emerged after the 2006 general election is "abortion fatigue," which many political observers believe still has a hold on the state. The idea is that voters have gotten so tired of the abortion discussion that they did not listen to new messages from either side. Whether the 2008 proposal included exceptions seems to have been irrelevant, says Joel Rosenthal, chairman of the South Dakota Republican Party from 1985-1989 and 1995-2003. Rosenthal was one of a few--and perhaps the only--observer who predicted the margin would not waver from 2006. "Regardless of the debate, nobody listened to it," Rosenthal says. "I talked to 20 people, regular people--a store clerk, my guy at the post office, my barber. Nobody changed their mind."

Others suggest that the electorate, revisiting the debate over four years and consumed by it throughout 2006, has just gotten so educated on the issue that they are now uncomfortable with black-and-white formulations that bans contain. Politicians and grassroots organizers say their supporters now express more nuanced positions on abortion than the simple "pro-life" or "pro-choice" claims of the past. After the extensive 2006 campaign, South Dakota's electorate is now well-versed in specific circumstances--from rape and incest to a list of fetal anomalies (trisomy is a term now widely understood in the state) to any number of health complications--that could lead a woman to consider an abortion. It's difficult to mount a political campaign driven by sound bites with such a sophisticated electorate. Even State Senator Julie Bartling, who sponsored the 2006 bill in the state Senate, would not vote for her original ban. To get her support now, she explains, an abortion ban would need an exception to protect women's health, albeit one not too broadly drawn. "As far as I'm concerned, there would have to be some very defining language," she says. "The health of mother could be very, very broad, so the proper language has to be there."

Pro-life forces also can claim some credit for defeating the bill. In 2004, they feuded internally over the wisdom of passing a ban, given the make-up of the U.S. Supreme Court at the time; but in 2006, they set aside that argument in the name of unity. On the other side of the issue, any harmony that existed among factions of South Dakota's anti-abortion community evaporated by 2008. South Dakota Right to Life, a group that pre-dates the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, officially opposed the 2008 ban, stating the exceptions made it unpalatable. Catholic bishops urged abortion opponents to vote for the ban anyway. Political science professor and blogger Ken Blanchard calls the in-fighting "a recipe for disaster in democratic politics."

Despite their back-to-back defeats at the polls, the anti-abortion activists driving the abortion bans have vowed to charge forward. On election night 2008, Leslee Unruh, head of the Vote Yes for Life campaign, stood before TV cameras repeating her refrain from 2006 to "never concede" defeat as volunteers packed up chairs and swept floors behind her. In an op-ed piece for the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, her husband, Allen Unruh, compared the fight to end abortion to the fights to end slavery and racial segregation. "When we look back on history, our country now feels that public sentiment not only was reprehensible, but we have elected our first black president of the U.S.," he wrote. "This is not the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning."

But Rhoden says that after losing twice at the ballot box, lawmakers would be even less likely to pass an abortion ban now than they were in 2007, when such a bill died in a Senate committee. "A lot of legislators, the perception among them was that their constituency was behind them. I think they've lost a lot of that loving feeling," says Rhoden, who was then House majority leader. "I had caucus members come to me just panicked because they didn't want to vote again."

While it's generally agreed that South Dakotans haven't dramatically changed their view of themselves as "pro-life," Rhoden isn't the only one who thinks the well is poisoned. Blanchard, the political science professor, contends that the rapid-fire repeats of the issue have hurt pro-life efforts in South Dakota. "By making the [2006] bill so extreme, they made the right-to-life movement look like a bunch of nuts," he says. "Coming back two years later without any rest from the issue and producing a more moderate bill--but only a little more moderate--they may have permanently altered people's view of them as just a bunch of busy bodies."

Bartling, the state senator who sponsored the 2006 bill, agrees, but says the legislature will still probably pass less dramatic abortion restrictions in "bits and pieces." An all-out ban, however, would be dead on arrival. "I don't think you'll see that get through the legislature in the foreseeable future," she says. "The message is out there that if there's ever going to be a successful ban put through, it's going to have to come from a vote of the people." And as the past two elections have shown, that vote is unlikely to come any time soon.

[TommyCraig]

"I''''d say you''''re far more fixated on the desire to control than you are concerned about life".
Posted by Zendigity at 09:18 AM : Dec 04, 2008
I have no desire to control your thoughts or personal actions effecting yourself. I do, however, think that it is wrong for a person who is pregnant to have the ability to kill the baby as if disregarding an old purse or pair of shoes. This is a child for which we are talking. I guess to you I am warped for believing in protecting life. And yes I have been involved in community service.
In your state of mind, terminating babies as a convenience to the mother or population control should be the norm. What a truly warped sense of thinking! Hint!, don''t ever tell your children you feel this way, you will only devalue them!


"Fact is, women just don''''t like anyone telling them whether they can or cannot have a baby and banning abortions is forcing us to have them whether we like it or not".
Posted by catlady1412 at 09:11 AM : Dec 04, 2008
What a very selfish statement!

[zendigity]

Posted by tcandrews62
Yes, to use you as the model of a typical anti-choice individual, I''d say you''re far more fixated on the desire to control than you are concerned about life. You demand that everyone subscribe to your warped point of view as though you have some kind of understanding that escapes everyone else. If you were really concerned about life you''d be working to help out the underprivledged children in the ghettos, but instead you spend your time on CBS comment pages demanding people live their lives the way you think they should.

[catlady1412]

Fact is, women just don''t like anyone telling them whether they can or cannot have a baby and banning abortions is forcing us to have them whether we like it or not. And what''s with allowing pharmacists to not fill birth control prescriptions when you also ban abortions? If you don''t like filling the prescription as presented, get another job! I had to take birth control pills to control endometriosis, not to prevent pregnancy since I was infertile. So I would have to hunt down some pharmacist to give it to me? That means my reasons for taking it are his business? I don''t think so. I don''t feel like telling the pharmacist I would not violate his religious beliefs just so he can feel better about doing his job.

[TommyCraig]

Posted by Zendigity at 06:44 PM : Dec 03, 2008
Ok, lets say the penalty should be the same as a person murdering an innocent child.
All that I read on this blog are excuses for killing a child. I am very sorry that a high school girl has died from some butcher destroying a life, Or two for that matter.
And, do you really believe that the pro-life advocates are not concerned about life, but rather control over your decisions?
Posted by irmcvet971 at 02:24 PM : Dec 03, 2008
I guess I am a fascist if that means protecting an innocent baby from being murdered.
Personally, I think people who are willing to look the other way (pro-choice) and allow abortions are truly cowards. To think that it is between a mother and her Doctor is a ridiculous statement. The baby is a human life serperate from the mother (DNA different).
Can you not just admit that the unborn baby is a child (as proven by the SCIENTIFIC METHOD). Just because you want to believe others, doesn''t change the facts. You know facts, things that are actually true and can be proven.
WHY CAN''T YOU GET THAT!

[zendigity]

-Posted by tcandrews62
I use the term anti-choice because what motivates the "pro-life" movement isn''t their desire to stop abortions from happening, it''s their need to control the decisions and choices of other people through force...very far from free will indeed.
I don''t think anyone''s Pro-Abortion, rather they simply believe that government''s power shouldn''t be such that people aren''t able to make decisions which affect their own health and wellbeing.
BTW- I think it''s disgusting that you don''t even have enough strength in your convictions to express your own opinion on what would be an adequate prison sentence for a woman who has an abortion; instead leave it to "government" to decide; that''s just pathetic.
Please try having a backbone before you try having an opinion.

[irmcvet971]

Posted by tcandrews62 at 12:33 PM : Dec 03, 2008

I can still remember this young girl in my Senior Class in High School.. We had been friends our entire life as she grew up near me and we played as kids. Her Parents were very Religious People and were extremely strick with her, so much so that she had to sneak out to go to Football games. She turns up with child that winter and didn''t tell anyone... instead she drove with friends to a Near by City for a Back Ally Abortion... they weren''t legal then. Now she is dead and so many were like her. For any of you fascist, and you are fascist, to think YOU are going to stop some scared Teenager or desperate housewife from obtaining an Abortion is simply ignoring fact and truth. All you will do is drive them back into the allies to die... We need, as a country, to look at ways to prevent unwanted children and ways to prevent Abortion. Today a woman can take the Morning After Pill and has several other options available for slip ups and when Nature overrules common sense. Let''s make those more available to young women and put these Control Freaks where they belong, in the dust of history. Bottom line thought the choice must remain with the Woman and the Doctor.

[TommyCraig]

"To all the Anti-Choice people: I have one question...How much prison time would you suggest a woman receive for having an abortion"?
Posted by Zendigity at 11:14 AM : Dec 03, 2008
Why do you use the term "anti-choice"? You either oppose abortion (not choice) or support its'' practice. Is the term "choice" used to make this practice appear more humane?
It is taking a life any way you want to color it. You can make all of the excuses, non-threatoning words (choice as opposed to abortion), or blame the Christians all you want. However, atleast man-up and admit the deed that you support. That is the killing of an unborn child upto and including the 9th month of pregnancy (95% for personal convenience).
Please forget the talk about back alley abortions for they are as wrong as a society that deems it ok to kill babies.
Thats it in a wrap. Our society, since 1973 has slipped into a destructive mindset about the sanctity of life and the results are quite noticeable.
And to answer your question, all of those involved in the process of killing an unborn child should be prosecuted. The punishment, I''ll leave that to the government. My only point is that those responsible and support abortion realize what it is that they are doing. And that is of course, killing an innocent child with seperate DNA within the womb of women.

[ioweign]

Top Ten Signs You''re a Fundamentalist Christian

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically
established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing
dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is
a few generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who
share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in
an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and
"loving."


3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince
you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all
the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.

2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers.
You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining
99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible,
Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.

[ioweign]

Top Ten Signs You''re a Fundamentalist Christian


10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions,
but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other
life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah,
but you don''t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of
Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua"
including women, children, and trees!

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with
women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary,
who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended
into the sky.

[zendigity]

To all the Anti-Choice people: I have one question...How much prison time would you suggest a woman receive for having an abortion? Should she receive 1 year, 5? Since abortion is "murder" should she get life; maybe the death penalty? Wouldn''t that make it pretty ironic to call yourself "pro-life"

[zendigity]

if the bible thumpers believed what they preach, then they would believe that God would dole out appropriate punishment.
-Posted by hober_mallow

I think you hit the nail on the head, these people are an afront to their own God, first they limit his power by insisting there is only one way to reach him; then they insist on trying to force everyone else to follow own failed path towards finding him. Hey, God gave everyone free will; why is it the "Christians" are so determined to try to take it away? Apparently they don''t have that much faith in their god after all....

[TommyCraig]

The overwhelming majority of all abortions, (95%), are done as a means of birth control.

Only 1% are performed because of rape or incest;

1% because of fetal abnormalities;

3% due to the mother''s health problems.
Source: Central Illinois Right To Life

Reasons Women Choose Abortion (U.S.)

Wants to postpone childbearing: 25.5%
Wants no (more) children: 7.9%
Cannot afford a baby: 21.3%
Having a child will disrupt education or job: 10.8%
Has relationship problem or partner does not want pregnancy: 14.1%
Too young; parent(s) or other(s) object to pregnancy: 12.2%
Risk to maternal health: 2.8%
Risk to fetal health: 3.3%
Other: 2.1%

Source:Bankole, Akinrinola; Singh, Susheela; Haas, Taylor. Reasons Why Women Have Induced Abortions: Evidence from 27 Countries. International Family Planning Perspectives, 1998, 24(3):117–127 & 152 As reported by:The Alan Guttmacher Institute Online:

Why is taking the life of a baby considered a personal matter? This child has different DNA distinguishing itself from the mother. This child can be killed upto the 9th month of pregnancy.
How can you sleep at night knowning that you are killing an innocent baby in the name of personal greed.
Open your eyes!

[kphx]

South Dakotans are not that dumb, that they will let their stupid politicians to decide on their abortions. It is a personal deicision and South Dakotans are intelligent enough to decide for themselves.

[roger3815]

It''s yet-another-example of how the religious nut jobs in this country are all for constitutional bans so long as they don''t ban their own freedoms.

[rwsmith29456]

It''s easy to say and want pro-life, but in the real world we have to accept some abortions as necessary. I think SD has the right idea to limit abortions, but banning them would only move abortions out of the clinic or hospital and back into the alleys and back rooms. Who wants to bring those days back?

[lonliladi]

How about this for an explanation?
We in SD do not want the government - not even our own elected - to tell us if we can have an abortion or not. That is a personal decision that should ONLY be made by the mother or her spokesperson should she be unable to defend herself. We are not the hicks some of the "finer" people have described. We are VERY capable of making up our own minds, and I feel, on this subject - THE PEOPLE OF SD HAVE SPOKEN LOUD & CLEAR what our options should be.

[hober_mallow]

maybe it''s not the government''s job to restrict abortion?

if the bible thumpers believed what they preach, then they would believe that God would dole out appropriate punishment.

[oneworldusa]

Maybe people believe that the decision to have or not have an abortion, for whatever the reason, is a personal matter and not that of the government to dictate. The matter should remain between a woman and her own faith, or a family and its faith.