Abortion

South Dakota Legislator Uses Newspaper Column to Solicit Funding for Anti-Choice Legal Defense Fund

A local Republican legislator uses her public office to raise money for the state to defend its unconstitutional "informed consent" law.

The state of South Dakota has been raising money in their legal defense fund for years now, gathering donations to continue battling court rulings on their unconstitutional anti-choice laws.  In the wake of the passage of HB 1217, the new law that would require women to wait at least 72 hours before having an abortion, as well as meet with a member of a religiously-based “pregnancy help” center before obtaining the procedure, anti-choice advocates, some of whom would benefit financially from the new law, have said they would be soliciting money for the legal defense fund.

Now, a Republican state legislature provides an all out plea for donations in a local newspaper column.

Via the Rapid City Journal:

Planned Parenthood has sued the state of South Dakota over this law enacted by our duly elected representative government.

Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit, not the state legislature or governor, will cost the state taxpayer to defend the law.

Despite Planned Parenthood’s blame, the South Dakota Pro-Life Litigation Sub Fund has been established, and dollars are accumulating to defend our informed consent law.

If you support the effort to defend our law from Planned Parenthood’s suit, send any amount to Life Protection Fund, c/o Office of the Governor, 501 E. Capitol Ave., Pierre, SD 57501.

Our state laws require a 3-day wait to buy a home; the decision regarding termination of the mother/child relationship deserves at least as much protection and deliberation.

The South Dakota Informed Consent Law requires a consultation with the fully trained staff of a Pregnancy Care Center to provide the face to face relationship and informed consent necessary for the woman faced with a crisis pregnancy. The mother’s decision must be voluntary, uncoerced and informed.

Our South Dakota informed consent law merely brings the practice of elective abortion surgery closer to compliance with the South Dakota State Medical Association’s accepted sound principles of practice.

The column, which begins by comparing abortion to the Caylee Anthony murder, is a clear attempt by a politician to use her role as a state legislator to use the local paper to fund raise for the defense fund.  Also, despite the lawmaker’s claim otherwise, the lawsuit only costs the state money if they lose — something that wouldn’t happen if they didn’t write a law so ridiculously bad that even the judge injuncting it stated it was “humiliating and degrading” to women.