2-28-06, 9:14 am

The South Dakota state legislature’s passage of a bill that would criminalize abortions is uniting health care advocates and supporters of women’s reproductive rights in a looming legal battle to protect access to abortions.

The South Dakota measure would ban abortions and levy a $5,000 fine and/or a stiff prison sentence of up to five years on doctors who provide them. The law would prohibit abortions even for pregnancies caused by rape or incest, or when giving birth would damage the health of the mother.

Opponents of reproductive choice and supporters of this law, which passed in a Republican controlled legislature and is now at the desk of South Dakota’s Republican Governor Mike Rounds, have openly declared the passage of this law as a direct attack on Roe v. Wade. Rounds has indicated an intention of signing it.

Opponents of reproductive choice believe that with the rightward tilt of the current Supreme Court, this law will be the beginning of the court battle to overturn historic decisions that interpreted the Constitution as protecting the right to privacy, overturned prohibitions on abortions, and held that reproduction was a matter of private choice and health for a woman.
Supporters of women’s reproductive rights have already mobilized to block passage of the law and, failing that, to fight it in the courts. National reproductive rights organizations and women’s equality organizations have condemned the law and are mobilizing financial and political support against it.

Immediately after the law passed in the legislature, Planned Parenthood announced its intention to fight the law in the courts. Planned Parenthood Senior Staff Attorney Eve Gartner said, 'This ban is an attack on women's fundamental right of privacy and their ability to make the most intimate and personal choice about when and whether to have a child.'

Gartner added that the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the constitutional right to make the private choice to have an abortion, vowing that 'Planned Parenthood will go to court to ensure women, with their doctors and families, continue to be able to make personal health care decisions — not politicians.'

National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy expressed concern that the new make-up of the high court will jeopardize reproductive rights. '[G]iven the current breakdown of the High Court, whose two newest justices have a history of opposition to women's rights, the outcome could well be a reversal of Roe.'

Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-choice America, described the passage of the bill as 'a monumental setback for women' and urged South Dakotans to demand that Governor Rounds veto the bill.

'The actions of the South Dakota legislature are a chilling reminder of the lengths to which anti-choice lawmakers will go to interfere in our most difficult and personal decisions,' said Keenan.

The right of a woman to self-determination through reproductive choice is a basic human right and should be legally protected everywhere, at all times. This is a political right, but it is also directly a matter of women’s health. Politicians who use an anti-choice view for political gain and, in so doing, denigrate and try to subjugate women are extremists at best and cannot serve in good faith in a democratic society. We urge the full support for the struggle for reproductive choice from all individuals and groups that believe in and fight for equality.

To find out more about supporting reproductive rights:

NARAL Pro-Choice America Choice USA National Organization of Women