House Republicans say they’re going to invite the backer of a constitutional abortion rights ballot question to testify in a legislative hearing.
The hearing could kick off what will likely be a topic of heavy discussion until November.
The supermajority Republican state legislature is famously anti-abortion. Groups like South Dakota Right To Life are very influential in the state Capitol.
Abortion is outlawed, including for pregnancies caused by rape and incest. Efforts to clarify the state’s only exception, to save the life of the mother, stalled last year.
Republican lawmakers are introducing a resolution to oppose a pending ballot question to add abortion rights to the state constitution.
Republican Rep. Will Mortenson said, if passed, the proposed ballot question will hamstring future abortion efforts by the Legislature.
“There won’t be any different version of pro-life, or even middle of the road policy that we could pass,” Mortenson said. “Because it’s such an extreme position that overrides decades of protections for mother, protections for providers and of course protections for children.”
If the constitutional amendment is passed, it is likely the Legislature will have to address the new abortion landscape.
The proposed ballot question prohibits the state from regulating abortion in the first trimester, allows lawmakers to regulate it the second trimester and grants the prohibition of abortion in the third. The third trimester exception is to protect the health or life of the mother.
The ballot question to place abortion rights in the state constitution is backed by an organization run by Rick Weiland, a former South Dakota Democratic US Senate candidate.
Weiland said he’s not received an invitation, yet, but will consider testifying. He said South Dakotan's deserve to weigh in on abortion.
“Right now, it’s almost no rights, versus the rights of ‘Roe,’ which were a 50-year, long-standing history that the country had, that the ‘Dobbs’ decision threw all that back to the states,” Weiland said. “That’s why we’re so adamant about giving the voters a choice in November.”
Weiland said his team has collected and validated over 42,000 signatures. He said they’re validating another 10,000 signatures and expect to submit them to the secretary of state’s office in a couple months.
Wieland said they expect to make the November ballot.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the details of the proposed ballot measure.
