NPR Examines Proposed Abortion Ban On South Dakota Ballot

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 28 Oct 2008 - 6:00 PDT

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NPR's "Morning Edition" on Monday examined South Dakota's Initiated Measure 11, which, if approved by state voters, would ban virtually all abortions in the state except in narrowly defined cases of rape or incest or to preserve the health or life of the woman. Allen Unruh -- a campaign organizer for supporters of Initiated Measure 11 and an antiabortion advocate -- said proponents of the ban added the exceptions after a similar measure with no exceptions failed in the last election. "Countless people said, 'If you'd had an exception for rape and incest, then we'd have voted with you,'" Unruh said.

Sarah Stoesz -- CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota -- called the limits on the ban "nothing but a smoke screen" (Rovner, "Morning Edition," NPR, 10/27). The ballot language on the health of the woman exception states that an abortion could only be preformed to avert a "substantial and irreversible" maternal health risk of impairment to "a major bodily organ or system" (Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 10/24). According to Stoesz, "doctors will have to be so absolutely certain that a woman could fit through this narrow, narrow exception so they would not under any circumstances make a mistake -- because if they make a mistake, they are subjected to potential felony charges." NPR reports that the rape and incest exceptions to the ban come with similar strings: They require the doctor to collect and preserve DNA samples from the fetus. Backers of the ban say that will help catch criminals.

According to NPR, if the measure passes, "it could be used to mount a U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the right to abortion nationwide." Stoesz said, "A state that has only 778,000 people living in it could potentially set in motion a course of events that could overturn" Roe.

No South Dakota physicians perform abortions under the state's current laws; Planned Parenthood flies in physicians from Minnesota to perform about 700 to 800 abortions annually -- giving the state one of the lowest abortion rates in the U.S. ("Morning Edition," NPR, 10/27).

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