Caroline Woods is the Communications Director with the Life Defense Fund in South Dakota.
She said South Dakota has a really radical, extreme abortion on the ballot for voters in this upcoming election.
Nine other states have abortion-related measures on the ballot this fall.
Woods is concerned that the few restrictions the South Dakota measure does include can be easily manipulated.
“It basically does a few things: No. 1, it allows abortion up to birth. So that means a baby right before it's born, abortion could be justified for any 'health risk' of the mother. That includes emotional, psychological, physical of any kind. Basically, if I'm a little anxious, if I have a few more headaches, I can get an abortion."
While South Dakota’s unborn children need protection, so do the state’s women. This measure is a rush to abortion without concern for women’s health, Woods says.
“It removes all health and safety standards for women. This is detrimental to women's health, first and foremost because you don't have to have a clean facility, you don't have to have clean instruments. You have no guidelines for what is a safe environment to do this. Any regular Joe off the street can come on your kitchen table and give you an abortion. There are no accountability measures."
The proposed amendment is also an affront to parents’ rights, Wood says. They would be left out of the equation if their daughter is being forced or coerced into an abortion.
“Someone who might rape your daughter or a sex trafficker who wants to hide what they've done, their criminal, sick activity, they can take your daughter in and force her to get an abortion, and guess what, you as a parent, you don't get to be notified according to law. So, you get all your rights taken away from you for protecting and loving your daughter."
No concern for doctors
The conscientious objections of healthcare professionals are also disregarded. Woods says that doctors and nurses get no conscience protections when forced to give an abortion.
“So this is a radical, all the way around measure that we as South Dakotans do not want here in South Dakota. It doesn't espouse our values here, but the Left and the abortion lobby are lying and cheating and trying to get this thing shoved through. They’re not being upfront with voters on what it actually is and what it actually does for women's health."
The measure will become law if it gets more than 50% of the vote.
She added that Dakotans for Health, which she said is for anything but health, illegally got this on the ballot.
State law requires 35,000 signatures to get an initiative on the ballot.
Dakotans for Health used out-of-state paid “circulators” to help reach the required numbers. Woods said she’s spoken to numerous people who regret having signed the petition.
If the measure passes a state that currently bans most abortions would be able to regulate the practice only in cases that put the mother’s life in danger.
“We've got over 100 hours of them lying and cheating and having people sign twice and deceiving them into signing it so that's how it got in the ballot in the 1st place, so we're actually in court right now you know asking the judge to say this actually should be an invalidated measure because they got it on by cheating and lying … and breaking law."
Part of that deception included Dakotans for Health describing the measure as pro-life or saying it would simply Roe v. Wade to the 22-week ban that existed before the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision, Woods says.
