Stigma, strict laws make abortion rare in South Dakota
State seen as testing ground for limiting Roe
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- The waiting room at the Planned Parenthood clinic had been packed by the time the doctor arrived, late because of delays in Minneapolis.
It was clinic day, the one day a week in which the only facility in South Dakota that provides abortions could take in patients. This time it was a Wednesday. The week before, it was a Monday.
The day changes depending on the schedules of four doctors from Minnesota who fly in here on a rotating basis to perform abortions. This is something no doctor practicing within South Dakota will do them.
The last doctor in South Dakota to perform abortions stopped doing them about eight years ago; the consensus in the medical community is that offering the procedure is not worth the stigma of being branded a baby killer.
South Dakota, those on both sides of the abortion debate have agreed, , has become one of the hardest states in the country in which to obtain a procedure involving an abortion.
One of three states to have only one abortion provider, North Dakota and Mississippi are the others, South Dakota, largely because of a strong antiabortion lobby, is also becoming a leading national laboratory for testing the limits of state laws restricting abortion, say opponents and advocates of abortion rights.
In 2005, the South Dakota Legislature passed five laws restricting abortion.
A bill to ban abortion outright failed by one vote in 2004, but the stigma attached to the procedure is very much alive.
New laws are all but assured for the coming year.
A 17-member abortion task force, made up largely of staunch abortion opponents, issued recommendations to the Legislature last month that included some of the most restrictive abortion requirements in the country.
The task force report states that science defines life as beginning at conception and recommends a law that gives fetuses the same protection that children get after birth, thus banning abortion.
Until such a ban, the task force recommends requiring that a woman watch an ultrasound of her fetus, that doctors warn women about the psychological and physical dangers of abortion, and that women receive psychological counseling before the abortion, among other measures.
As leaders on both sides of the debate focus on the Supreme Court nomination hearings of Samuel A. Alito Jr., they are watching states such as South Dakota pass more and more restrictions that might be upheld by a more conservative Supreme Court.
''Samuel Alito wrote the blueprint 20 years ago on how to dismantle and eventually overturn Roe," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, referring to a memo Alito wrote in 1985 in which he mentioned passing restrictions on abortion as a way to mitigate the effects of Roe vs. Wade.
''If he is confirmed, Alito could cast the decisive vote that allows additional attacks on women's reproductive freedom from the states to stand."
But Mary Spaulding Balch, director of the state legislation department of the National Right to Life campaign, said South Dakota is one of many states that have passed laws the group has been espousing for more than 30 years.
''Working within the fact that the Supreme Court said that it's legal to kill unborn children," she said, ''it makes sense that you do your best to save whatever lives you can."
