News

By Hilary White

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. October 12, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – South Dakota’s prohibition on abortion, passed overwhelmingly in the state legislature and signed into law by Governor Mike Rounds, awaits a public referendum set for November 7th. In the meantime, the law – called by Rounds “a direct challenge” to Roe vs. Wade – is being supported by a strongly pro-woman campaign that points to the psychological and physical damage done to women by abortion.

Complaining that the pro-life supporters’ emphasis on the harm abortion does to women has disconcerted their strategy, Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and North and South Dakota is worried that the referendum is going to backfire.

Talking about the psychological and physical harms of abortion, “adds an element we’re not accustomed to” Planned Parenthood president and chief executive Sarah Stoesz told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s a different line of debate. And that is something we struggle with politically.”

The bill passed last February by a margin of 54-16 and later attempts to insert a so-called health exception failed 45-25.

Leslee Unruh, who runs a crisis pregnancy center and has been active in promoting the pro-life and pro-woman message, told the Los Angeles Times, “We women buy the choice line. We’re panicked, or we’re being pressured, or we’re ashamed to have a child outside marriage.”

Unruh, who also hosts a post-abortive support group, said that her own abortion 30 years ago left her life “darkened with regret and longing.” Unruh said, “If you don’t do your job right as a mother, what good is everything else?”

Indeed, a recent survey has shown that the “choice” rhetoric is of more use to activists in legislatures than to individual women. In September, the Elliot Institute published a report titled, Forced Abortion in America, that showed as many as 64 per cent of American women who had abortions reported they had been under some form of coercion or pressure.

The law’s supporters in the legislature also referred to the harm done to women by abortion. With abortion supporters using the so-called ‘rape exception’ as a wedge issue in their campaign, Republican Rep. Elizabeth Kraus said in the debates, “In a sexual rape, a woman is robbed of her purity; in this medical rape (abortion), she is robbed of her maternity.”

Other messages of the law’s supporters have included a radio segment featuring a woman who survived a rape and kept her child. Kayla Brandt, 29 survived an abortion asks women on the radio ads to spare other women “the pain of imagining a life that could have been.”
Â
  Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Georgia and Rhode Island, are considering proposing a similar ban and are awaiting the outcome of the referendum. Should the referendum uphold the law, Planned Parenthood will make a court challenge.

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
  South Dakota Abortion Ban Delayed: Will Go to Public Vote
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06062004.html

Special Report Exposes America’s Forced Abortion Epidemic
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/sep/06092902.html