Well this is interesting.
A campaign to push the legislation through the U.S. court system up to the Supreme Court where South Dakotans can lead the charge to overturn Roe v. Wade, will cost over $1 million. South Dakota doesn’t have that kind of money. So Rounds is studying ways of accepting into the state treasury private funds with which to wage the battle in the name of the South Dakota citizenry. In short,the well-heeled opponents of abortion are going to hire the public state government to fight their battle.
Yeah, that’s right. South Dakotans, who are split on the abortion issue, are likely to be unhappy about the state exhausting its funds (their tax dollars) trying to overturn Roe. Enter the anti-choice establishment and its deep pockets:
The concern about how South Dakota’s voters really feel about the effort to outlaw abortion is reflected in Governor Rounds’s publicly affirmed reservation about the legal costs that the state will rack up defending this bill in the federal courts against the enjoinment that Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota reportedly plans to seek. Never fear, say pro-life groups, an anonymous donor or donors are waiting in the wings to pony up $1 million for the abortion ban’s legal fees.
When asked if the state will accept such legal gratuity, the Governor’s Press Secretary Mark Johnston answered, “There certainly has been discussion about that cost, and there does need to be provisions for receiving that money into the treasury,” and the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader reported on Friday that a bill was being passed to set up such a special pro-life war chest in the state’s treasury. But when probed more specifically about the anonymous donation, Johnston checked himself, answering “I can’t think of whether [the Governor] has said that publicly, so I can’t answer that.”
So the anti-choicers are effectively purchasing the state government, and using it to take away our basic human rights. Outraged yet?