Sheryl Johnson agrees with President Biden — abortion issue will benefit Democratic candidates this year

Will having a proposed state constitutional amendment that would ensure abortion access in South Dakota have an impact on political races?

Will it benefit Democrats, who are almost entirely pro-choice?

President Joe Biden is counting on voters angry with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade to boost his chances this fall. Biden is somehow trailing former President and current serial defendant Donald Trump in polls, including some in the swing states that will likely determine the winner of this election.

“Let’s be real clear, there’s one person responsible for this nightmare, and he acknowledges and brags about it — Donald Trump,” Biden said in Tampa on April 23. “Well, now Trump says the law is ‘working the way that it’s supposed to.’”

Biden poked fun at the former president’s penchant for trying to cash in on everything, no matter how sacred.

“He described the Dobbs decision as a miracle,” Biden said. “Maybe it comes from that Bible he’s trying to sell.”

Abortion will be front and center in campaigns across the country this year. South Dakotans will vote on abortion for the third time after Dakotans for Health submitted petitions with the signatures of more than 55,000 registered voters — far more than the 35,000 needed to qualify for the ballot.

Congressional candidate Sheryl Johnson thinks this ballot measure will have a definite impact on her race and others on the November ballot.

“Yes, I think having the Roe petition on the ballot will help Democrats in that it will help get more women out to vote. Currently, South Dakota has one of the lowest rates of turnout of women voters,” Johnson (seen above in an image from her Facebook page) told me on Wednesday. “It will also bring out more young people and people who believe in freedom from government interference in private lives.”

She said it’s a very personal issue for her, and prodded her to challenge Rep. Dusty Johnson, who did not have a Democratic opponent in 2020 or 2022.

“As the mother of four daughters, this issue is one reason I decided to run.  South Dakota women are smart, strong and responsible and I am not going to give strangers or the government the power to make decisions for them,” she said. “The choice to terminate a pregnancy should be between a woman and her doctor.”

Johnson said she wants to debate which party is really pro-family and pro-children. Republicans have tried to make it their own, but she said the facts differ from that viewpoint.

“The same GOP legislators who want to force women to have children also voted against accepting a $6 million grant to feed hungry South Dakota children over the summer,” Johnson said. “Pro-life to me includes helping families once children are born. Affordable health care, affordable day care and wages that support working families are all pro-life issues.”

She also expects the proposed amendment to pass, noting South Dakotans rejected abortion bans in 2006 and 2008.

“I do think South Dakotans will support this (as they have done twice in the past), no matter how much misinformation the forced birthers put out there,” Johnson said.

She also criticized the effort to strike the ballot question by trying to convince petition signers to remove their names from them.

“We have watched the ‘decline to signers’ do everything possible to keep this issue from getting to the ballot including getting a law passed to allow people to remove their signatures from the petition and then calling to harass people who signed the petition to try to convince them to remove their signatures,” Johnson said. “They lie about how women will abort babies in the ninth month — no woman is going to go through pregnancy for nine months then change their mind and no doctor would abort a baby at that stage. Even if the mother’s life was in danger the doctors would do everything they could to save both the mother and the child.”

South Dakota Democratic Party Chair Shane Merrill said the SDDP “has always and will continue to support” a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions.

“The state’s current abortion ban is putting women’s lives at risk. In past elections, South Dakotans have voted against abortion bans,” Merrill told me. “A recent survey from the South Dakota Polling Project shows a majority of registered voters support exceptions for victims of rape and incest as well as to protect the health of the mother. It's difficult to say whether the current amendment will help Democratic candidates on the ballot this November, but it is an issue that is already galvanizing voters across the country.”

Sheryl Johnson and other Democratic candidates are hoping Republican and independent voters as well as Democrat side with them over abortion rights. The GOP has more than a two-to-one edge in voter registration and to win, Sheryl has to convince a lot of voters to cross party lines.

Will abortion rights be a strong enough issue to cause Republicans to cast a vote for a Democrat? Or will the ones who support abortion rights vote for the amendment and then cast a vote for Dusty, who has made his anti-abortion views quite public during his career?

In January, he boasted he earned an A+ rating on Susan B. Anthony’s Pro-Life Scorecard for his votes and actions in 2023.

“Every life should be protected, no matter how small,” Johnson said in a press release. “Unfortunately, the Biden administration wants to do anything it can to promote access to abortion. I’m committed to defending even the tiniest of humans and prohibiting taxpayer dollars from funding abortion services.”

Will that stance cost him votes, maybe even his seat in Congress? Can abortion help an underfunded, lesser-known Democrat defeat an apparently popular three-term Republican incumbent in this very conservative state?

It’s one of the more intriguing questions in the 2024 campaign.

Fourth-generation South Dakotan Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states and contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The London Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets. Reprint with permission.