“A kindergarten class dies every week”
That’s what Dr. Allen Unruh told me in a phone conversation about what’s happening in South Dakota since the news media went away last year.
In fact, not much media even covered the story of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last June to uphold the South Dakota “informed consent†law. It’s the most thorough and advanced law in the country, requiring an abortionist to inform a woman that (being pregnant) she is carrying an already-existing, complete, separate and unique human being, and that abortion may cause harmful psychological effects, among other disclosures. Planned Parenthood, which fought the “informed consent†law in court time and again, contended that’s an ideological statement. The full 8th Circuit found that the disclosure is biological fact.
That ruling required the informed consent law to be applied and obeyed immediately. Here’s how Planned Parenthood reacted at the time. One year ago.
Monday was the first day that Planned Parenthood, which operates the only abortion business in South Dakota, had to comply with a new state law telling women the truth about abortion. Rather than tell women abortion kills children and has numerous risks, Planned Parenthood closed its doors.
That didn’t last long, because they’ve been in business just about ever since, it turns out. They are disobeying the law and continuing the abortion business as before. “A kindergarten class dies every week in Sioux Falls”, roughly the number of babies aborted in the Planned Parenthood clinic there, says Unruh. “They have willfully and wantonly defied the law, and there have been zero consequences.”
Unruh says he called South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long, who ran as a pro-life candidate for that office, and asked long why the clinic wasn’t shut down after defying the 8th Circuit Court ruling. “He said he didn’t know why,” Unruh claims, and that’s pretty astonishing for the state’s attorney general. “They arrest pro-life people if they even walk onto Planned Parenthood property for sidewalk counseling,” Unruh said. “But there are no consequences for Planned Parenthood ignoring this law. We can’t ignore laws. If went out and shot a hen pheasant I’d get slapped with a $200 fine. This law is non-negotiable.”
Planned Parenthood is defiant. Unruh says the head of the South Dakota Department of Health is an abortion advocate who has met with Planned Parenthood to work out some suitable language they can live with. What irony.
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We were facing something of the same situation in Texas, with various PP abortion facilities in San Antonio performing abortions, chemical and surgical, without licenses. One PP facility had a license and simply reported the abortions from the other facilities as their own; sounds like fraud to me.
The State Dept. of Health and Human Services was totally ignoring it until conservative legislators formed a coalition, made a press release exposing this and calling for DHHS intervention, and introduced a budget amendment that would cut off PP from all state funding. Unfortunately, the amendment failed to live very long but DHHS was publicly embarrassed and has now taken action. The PP clinics that were operating without licenses are being fined at what now appears to be a grand total of $100 thousand dollars and have been ordered to cease-and-desist from abortions. It appears that they are still engaging in some sneakiness but they are being carefully watched and the conservative coalition of legislators will keep DHHS feet to the fire.
South Dakota, you are welcomed to borrow our model.