Weiland: South Dakotans will decide this fall if they want to allow women to make their own health-care decisions
Two long years after we began, the South Dakota Secretary of State has certified that the people of South Dakota, not the politicians in Pierre, will be the ones to decide whether to restore Roe v. Wade as the law of South Dakota.
After an organized Decline to Sign campaign mercilessly harassed our young petition circulators, we are on the ballot with over 11,000 more valid signatures than required (above is a page of the petition from an image on the Dakotans for Health Facebook page).
After Right to Life’s ‘Life Defense Fund’ shoved their lies in the faces of citizens trying to sign our petition, we are on the ballot with over 54,281 submitted signatures.
Even after the so-called ‘Petition Integrity Committee’ tried to trick petition signers by implying they were from the Secretary of State’s office and pressuring them to take their names off our petition, we have 46,098 valid signatures, and they have exactly 19 yet-to-be-validated requests for removal.
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.
If there is anyone out there who still wonders whether abortion rights will be on the ballot in South Dakota this fall, this is your answer. Yes, it says, the people want women, not politicians, to have the right to decide.
Yes, it says, nobody should be required by law to carry the result of rape to term or to have their doctor be too afraid to give them the reproductive health care they require.
So, the fight begins. We hope there can be a civil discussion about deeply held moral beliefs leading to a reasoned decision balancing the rights of us all. That is democracy.
We must be prepared for a lavishly financed Right to Life campaign to smear our abortion rights amendment with lies about its effect. That is today’s world.
Rick Weiland of Sioux Falls, a former aide to Tom Daschle during his congressional career, ran for Congress as a Democrat in 1996 and 2002 and the Senate in 2014, has been instrumental in spearheading efforts to advance the Freedom Amendment and champion initiatives aimed at empowering citizens to shape critical policies through democratic processes.
