Rick Weiland says Ohio election results were victory for reproductive rights, denounces harassment of petitioners
The overwhelming majority by which Ohioans voted yesterday to restore reproductive rights to their citizens shows why anti-freedom anti-democracy zealots here in South Dakota are so desperate to keep our Restore Roe initiated amendment off the ballot next year.
Dakotans for Health has been collecting signatures for over a year to place a constitutional amendment on the 2024 general election ballot next November, leaving it up to the voters to decide and not the politicians in Pierre.
The clarity of the voice with which heavily Republican Ohio said, “Give us back our rights” is precisely the reason the campaign to deny South Dakota women their reproductive rights are based on an increasingly abusive campaign of harassment against the young women who are on the streets across South Dakota asking people to please sign our petition to let the voters decide.
They claim their highly organized campaign to follow our volunteer circulators around calling them “baby killers,” filming and recording their conversations with voters, even having their staff falsely pose as potential signers is about respecting the law. What it’s about is trying to make sure what happened in Ohio Tuesday won’t be allowed to happen in South Dakota next fall.
They are petrified because they know the anti-freedom law Ohioans threw out last night was nowhere near as extreme as South Dakota’s law. Very few South Dakotans understand that South Dakota women are now required, because of the ‘trigger law’, to carry a rapist's forced pregnancy to term. That is wrong.
Denying our citizens the right to vote on whether it is wrong is doubly wrong. They know exactly what South Dakotans will say if given the chance to vote, so their campaign is about denying us the right to vote.
Rick Weiland of Sioux Falls, who served as aide to Sen. Tom Daschle, and ran for the U.S. Senate and Congress, is the official sponsor of the Restore Roe v. Wade ballot measure and the co-founder of Dakotans for Health.
