South Dakota Becomes Abortion Battleground

Oct. 19, 2006 — -- At Vote Yes for Life, the headquarters of the campaign to reinstate the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the country, the phone banks are humming.

"Your vote can help protect the health of South Dakota women and save the lives of thousands of unborn children," says one youthful volunteer working the phones.

"Hello, my name is Perry," he says at another point. "I'm a volunteer at the Vote Yes for Life campaign."

Perry works alongside several other volunteers in a huge former flower warehouse out near the Sioux Falls airport. And it is here, in this gritty industrial neighborhood, that he and his friends try to change the nation.

"This is probably the greatest hope to the pro-life movement that's happened in 33 years," says Leslee Unruh, the manager at Vote Yes for Life.

The law they're fighting for bans abortions in all cases except when the life of the mother is at stake. There are no exceptions for rape, no exceptions for incest, no exceptions for fetal deformity. No exceptions.

Why the fight is on to reinstate the law requires some explanation.

Last spring, Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, signed the abortion ban into law. It was passed overwhelmingly in both houses of the state legislature. But it never took effect because, under South Dakota law, people can challenge laws they don't like if they can obtain enough signatures on a petition -- something opponents of the abortion ban quickly did, with thousands to spare.

"Certainly if the ban went into effect, I would not be able to practice medicine the way I would wish to practice medicine," says Dr. Maria Bell of the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families. Her organization opposes the ban.

Not that Bell performs abortions. No doctor in South Dakota does. There is only one clinic in the state where abortions can be obtained. It's in Sioux Falls, and the doctors who do the procedure are flown in from out of state. Still, Bell opposes the notion of lawmakers interfering with medicine.

"I shouldn't be thinking about what my government will allow me to do for the patient's health," she says.