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South Dakotans Reject Abortion Ban

Voters defeated South Dakota’s abortion ban. Woot!

At the moment, I’m having a hard time finding good reporting on the issue. (Even news.google has failed me, sniff!) So if you see some great analysis, do share. I haven’t even been able to find out what the margin was, but we’ll endeavor to keep you informed.

UPDATE: The margin, according to CNN, is 44% in favor, 56% opposed. Much closer than I would have liked, but South Dakota is a red state and overturning an act of the legislature is not inconsequential.


30 thoughts on South Dakotans Reject Abortion Ban

  1. *purrpurr*

    WOOHOO! *tosses confetti and dances about happily*

    *realizes her chemistry class started a minute ago*
    *stops checking the elections and goes off to class*

  2. Official results here. 44/56, just as CNN reported.

    But, geez, SD is a small state! Fewer than 400,000 votes TOTAL cast on the measure.

  3. Frankly, I was *surprised* by the largeness of the margin. It bodes extremely well when in the reddest of red states a ban on abortion is turned over by 10 points.

  4. Incidentally, that’s 44% in favor with 36%, via one of the last polls, believing mistakenly that there was a rape/incest exception, and that one doctor lying through his teeth on television saying it had a health exception.

    So, given the pro-life bag of dirty tricks, I’d say it’s a good day all around.

    By an inch or a mile, winning’s winning. (From someone who just watched the Republican governer beat his challenger by one percentage point. *fumes*)

  5. Just wondering, anybody know the text on the ballot? I wonder if it said outright there were no health, rape, or incest exceptions, or did it get all vague as in “do you support the proposed abortion ban?”

  6. I’m as pleased about this as the next supporter of reproductive rights and health. But, at the risk of ruining the party, I need to say that I’m nervous. The pro-choice movement’s decision to run their campaign on the fact that the ban provided no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother simply means that the SD legislature can just pass another one of these horrendous bills, with those exceptions, and pass it easily.The larger picture is the health and humanity of all pregnant and birthing women, but that picture was set aside in favor of better odds of winning. I don’t know that I would have done it differently, but I do know that it leaves choice in SD vulnerable once more to further whittling.

  7. Wasn’t the point of the SD ban to provide a test case to take to the Supreme Court and let them overturn Roe? If so, then it’s a very big thing that it didn’t survive. Also, I’ve been freaking out about what happens if Stevens needs to be replaced (he is 86, after all), and the new Senate means that Bush will have a harder time getting an Alito-type character through. So all around, last night was a pretty good night for choice.

  8. Even as a foreigner I was over the moon to hear this – a lot of us here in the UK were outraged when their choice was taken away, so this is great news for us as well.

  9. The pro-choice movement’s decision to run their campaign on the fact that the ban provided no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother simply means that the SD legislature can just pass another one of these horrendous bills, with those exceptions, and pass it easily.

    Yes, but as Sally said, the point of this was to provide a test case to bring to the Supreme Court. The path to the Supreme Court can take YEARS.

    The pro-choice side took the much smarter route of taking it directly to the people via the state’s ballot initiative process, which allowed the law to be stayed pending the outcome of the vote. And it allowed the voters to tell the legislature (and anti-choice groups) directly that they do not want a draconian ban on abortion, and that they’re in line with the rest of the country on this. It’s the legislature that’s out of the mainstream.

    Whoohoo!

  10. As absolutely psyched and relieved as I am (when my fiance told me this morning, I literally dropped to my knees and thanked God), I do share Nancy’s (#8) concern. My concern with the campaign was that it focused on the lack of exceptions (which REALLY exposed the “mushy-middle” of SD), and someone could easily try again to pass a bill with the exceptions in place.

    But there’s a big part of me hoping that it caused enough negative press, enough tourism boycotts, and enough exposure of the shoddiness of the special committee’s crap-ass report that proceeded the ban that anti-choice forces will be stayed for a while.

    And I hope that I don’t have to lend out my couch to any nice South Dakotan ladies soon.

  11. Kyra, thx for mentioning about those polls, I didn’t know the bill had been so misrepresented. I have to admit, these past 6 years have been so burny that I think I really expected a landslide in favor. I guess I didn’t give the good folks of S Dakota enough credit!

    45% v 55%, though – that’s the same margin by which Oregon (me!) rejected the parental notification bill. For some reason I find that really interesting, but I only just started my coffee so I’m going to hold off on thinkin too much about it. Those numbers do suggest, though, as someone already mentioned, that a ban with exceptions would pass easily.

  12. I know this is about the SD abortion ban being overturned (which, of course, YAY!!!) so not to hijack a thread or anything, but what is wrong with California (my home state)??? Schwarzenegger won by, last time I checked, 60% (Angelides was at a mere 35%)!!! Seriously, there’s something really wrong with people in this state. I went to Vienna last summer and even people in his home country think he’s a joke (some people I talked to couldn’t actually believe he was governor – they thought it was a joke). Oh, well, on a positive note, we defeated the Parental Notification Prop. (#85), a proposition we ALREADY REJECTED LAST NOVEMBER (#73). WTF?!

  13. Anyone know how the state legislators who voted for the ban fared in the election?

    Comparing the official results with the State House roll call and the State Senate roll call it appears that among the yea voters…

    Abdallah, Bartling, Greenfield, McNenny, Duenwald, Gant, Hansen, Koetzle, Lintz, Moore, Smidt, Apa, Gray (who ran unopposed), Kloucek, The Sodomized Virgin Napoli, Peterson, and Sutton all won their bids for re-election.

    Early, Koskan, and Kelly lost.

    (Those are just the state senate races. I’m feeling far too weak to make the comparisons for state house._

  14. I was happy, but not overly surprised. Anti-abortion measures have consistently lost at the polls, no matter what state.

    That’s true across the world, too. Years ago, voters in Italy—aka “the most Catholic nation in the world”—overwhelmingly rejected abortion restrictions.

    My take on this: “Pro-lifers” have loud mouths and lots of money, but only one vote apiece.

  15. Mary, the California GOP seems to have figured from the recall that persistence is key. They’ll keep calling new special elections and putting it on the ballot until they get the result they want.

  16. The pro-choice movement’s decision to run their campaign on the fact that the ban provided no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother simply means that the SD legislature can just pass another one of these horrendous bills, with those exceptions, and pass it easily.

    I went out to SD to help out with the campaign, and I can tell you that a lot of people working on the campaign had the same kinds of frustrations. But the fact remains that SD is a very red, very anti-choice state. Had we based our campaign on more pro-choice rhetoric, we would’ve easily lost, and women, not only in SD but around the country, would’ve been screwed. It was a purely strategic move.

    It remains to be seen whether it’s worth it to sacrifice some of your ideals in order to win, but that’s a much longer, less answerable question to think about than I can do here.

    (Also, an important clarification: the decision to bring it to the voters instead of the courts was not to put a hold on it – that would have happened either way (injunction on the law until SCOTUS made their decision). It was a more winnable fight brought to the people, and not the fight that the anti’s were expecting.)

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