Another South Dakota lesson

Well, look at this. Besides the heart of the debate over life in South Dakota, people have finally noticed the tenor of that debate, and the lesson in it all.

Where has one of this country’s most divisive issues been debated largely without the expected histrionics? South Dakota. Today’s ballot referendum has provided a refreshing model of public discourse.

It took them until election day to notice? Well, at least they did.

South Dakota isn’t usually a battleground state, but this fall, one of the country’s most important political fights has been waged here on the bitterly cold plains between Mount Rushmore and the Minnesota state line. In March, Gov. Mike Rounds signed a law that would ban almost all abortions within the state. Opponents countered by collecting enough signatures to put the issue on today’s ballot as “Referred Law 6.”

Casting aside all the merits of that law — which you can find in many posts here by clicking on ‘abortion’ over on the right — this journalist focused on something else we can learn from this battleground state.

What matters is that South Dakota’s referendum represents one of the few times since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide, that voters have gotten to debate the question directly at the polls.

That’s because it’s the first time Planned Parenthood did not take the law to court. It’s such a good law, they chose to fight it in the court of public opinion, and try to turn the public against it. So that campaign forced South Dakotans to discuss the law, which of course, is the way it should be.

South Dakotans have simply discovered that when you have to persuade your neighbors to join your cause — not judges in Washington — both sides become remarkably civil. That civility has been rare during the past three decades’ abortion wars. It’s a welcome change — but it’s also a chance to wonder how much more pleasant the national debate might have been if we had all been able to forge compromises within our communities instead of indulging in the extremes that carry the day.

We need not wonder what might have been. When this law passes, it will then be challenged in court by Planned Parenthood, which will start the process of working it through the different court systems up to the Supreme Court. When they finally do overturn Roe v. Wade, all the states will have the opportunity to take up the issue of abortion and decide it for themselves.

Let’s remember what a model South Dakota has been, and hope we can all have that civil discourse, after all.