South Dakotans deserve the right to vote on abortion rights, so it’s time to end prolonged legal battle
It is long past time to end the right to life movement’s two-year-long fight to deny the people of South Dakota the right to decide on the abortion issue.
As the sponsor of the Freedom Amendment and co-founder of Dakotans for Health, I am asking the South Dakota Supreme Court to put an end to the battle waged by state Rep. John Hansen’s right to life organization, the Life Defense Fund.
Enough. First you tried to intimidate our petition circulators. When that failed, you tried to convince South Dakotans not to sign our petitions (as shown in the image above from the Dakotans For Health Facebook page) by lying about what our amendment would do. When that failed, you claimed the 55,000 South Dakotans who signed our petition had been tricked into signing and rushed a law allowing them to withdraw their signatures through the legislature you control.
When that failed, because exactly zero of the people you claimed had been tricked agreed to withdraw their signatures (despite your paid callers trying to scam them into doing so by implying they were calling from the Secretary of State’s office), you filed a lawsuit to throw abortion rights off the ballot. When your lawsuit was dismissed, you chose to appeal to the South Dakota Supreme Court. It is time to let the people decide, and that is what we are today asking the South Dakota Supreme Court to do.
We understand why you have fought for two years to deny the people’s right to decide whether women’s access to reproductive health care should be threatened and women who have been raped required to give birth to the result of their rape. You know that this law under which you have condemned South Dakota women to live is a barbaric throwback to the “pregnant and barefoot” days of the past. You know that it will be overwhelmingly rejected by the people, so you fight desperately to deny them their rights.
If accepted, your frivolous lawsuit would deny the voters their right to decide not just on abortion, but on the carbon pipeline and every other issue on the ballot this fall. The idea that hundreds of thousands of South Dakota signatures on petitions dealing with numerous issues will all be peremptorily tossed out to serve your total abortion ban ideology is ridiculous.
A word of warning: South Dakotans weren’t born yesterday. They know that when someone says, “take my word for it,” they should grab for their wallet. For two years, you have been fighting to force South Dakotans to “take your word for it” that the Freedom Amendment is bad. If they grab for their wallets when you repeat your lies to them this fall, that will be on you.
The fact is that our freedom amendment gives women the same reproductive freedom they had before Roe was overturned. Because that truth is what we have fought from day one to let the people decide. Because what you right to life politicians claim is not true, you have fought to deny the people the right to decide.
Whether you will be allowed to get away with that is what the Supreme Court will soon decide.
Rick Weiland is the co-founder of Dakotans for Health and sponsor of the Restore Roe citizen-initiated amendment to the South Dakota Constitution. Dakotans for Health is a grassroots organization focused on health care and protecting the democratic process. The organization was instrumental in the successful 2022 campaign to expand Medicaid coverage to 52,000 low-income South Dakotans. Dakotans for Health is dedicated to ensuring all South Dakotans have access to the care they need, no matter who they are, what they look like, or how much money they have. In May, Dakotans for Health submitted a record number of signatures for its ballot measures, Amendment G to restore reproductive rights, and IM 28 to repeal the state’s regressive tax on groceries.
