South Dakota passes abortion law
The Mt. Rushmore state has been at the forefront of women’s health and protection laws applying to crisis pregnancy and abortion, and they’ve done it again. Lawmakers recently passed legislation requiring both a waiting period for abortion, and access to information about alternatives. So women really do have a choice.
Tuesday, it was signed into law by the governor. Here’s how some major media are reporting it.
Women who want an abortion in South Dakota will face the longest waiting period in the nation — three days — and have to undergo counseling at pregnancy help centers that discourage abortions under a measure signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Dennis Daugaard.
To clarify, the state is making sure women really will be informed before they sign any informed consent papers in an abortion clinic.
Dr. Allen Unruh of the Alpha Center in Sioux Falls has been out in front of the ongoing work to reduce abortions in that state, hoping more states will follow the trail they’re blazing in South Dakota. He provided me with some background on this law, including a recent letter to the editor of the Argus Leader by a former abortionist in the state, Dr. Patti Giebink urging the governor to sign the bill and the public to support it.
There is no true “doctor patient relationship” when you first meet the doctor after you already paid your money, signed the ‘consent’ form, and taken off your clothes in the procedure room…Women are treated like cattle and moved through the process before they can change their mind. That is…demeaning and insulting to women! Nowhere else in medicine is there such sub-standard care. If the public really knew what goes on in these abortion clinics, they would demand even stricter laws to protect their daughters, wives, nieces and grandaughters.
Unruh says that’s happening now. “This bill does not outlaw abortion,” he said. “Its intent is to prevent women from uninformed and coerced abortion.”
Women get alternatives in pregnancy help centers and free services and resources. They get a choice.
If the law providing for it withstands the lawsuits coming from Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.
