South Dakota

South Dakota has done it again.

One of the most anti-choice, women hating states, South Dakota passed legislation mandating harassment by anti-choice counselors on women seeking an abortion. South Dakota implemented a three-day waiting period along with a visit to the crisis pregnancy center. I have written about crisis pregnancy centers before (Ms. Magazine: The Clinic Across the Street 10/31/10)and no, nothing has changed. These deceiving centers bent on indoctrination are geared toward changing the mind of any women considering abortion and don't emphasize that they themselves don't provide them.

Before legislation was signed, Planned Parenthood announced that they would be suing. "Calling this law protective is supremely cynical," says Sarah Stoesz, who heads the local chapter of Planned Parenthood. "It's nothing but coercive."

“The 72-hour waiting period coupled with having to go to a crisis pregnancy center whose very mission is to dissuade women from going through with an abortion has grave constitutional concerns for us,” says a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota.

Besides the waiting period, the law mandates counseling from crisis pregnancy centers, mandating that women be told that an abortion “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.” It is a well known certainty that employees at the CPC have a record of providing misinformation about the physical and psychological risks associated with the procedure and use tactics like displaying graphic photos or quoting scripture in order to influence a woman’s decision.

South Dakota doesn't have a single doctor willing to provide abortions in the whole state. Doctors are flown in from Minnesota. I can't believe the spectacle of it all. A women seeking an abortion in South Dakota faces the hardest fight out of any other woman in any other state in the US.

Legislation in Texas would have required women to undergo a sonogram before an abortion; it has been amended to require that they be offered the chance to do so, though they can refuse. More than 20 states are considering restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion.

Lawsuits will fly over many of the bills that ultimately become law, and that's part of the strategy. Reproductive-rights groups will go after the most egregious laws that ultimately some of the less clearly unconstitutional ones will go unchallenged.

Residents of South Dakota have rejected banning most abortions in the state twice in recent years. Unfortunately that doesn't mean that those often the least affected by a woman's right to choose will stop trying to prevent them from doing so.