A bill further restricting access to abortion in South Dakota passed through the House side and is now headed to the Senate. In 2011, a new state abortion law required a 72-hour waiting period, among other constraints. This year, House Bill 1237 says weekends and holidays should not count when the 72 hours are tallied.
Representative Jon Hanson says he introduced the bill to give abortion patients additional time to consider their choice: “The bill before the House today is simply designed to provide the pregnant mother with the reasonable opportunity to seek and obtain counseling at a registered pregnancy help center as mandated in our existing statute.”
Hanson says pregnancy counseling centers can't be expected to be open on weekends and holidays.
“The bill also ensures that the pregnancy help centers have reasonable time on a regular basis to receive these pregnant mothers for counseling,” he says.
Representative Karen Soli, a Lutheran pastor, disagrees.
“The suggestion that counselors appointed for this purpose cannot make time on a weekend or holiday to help their neighbors make life and death decisions is offensive to me,” Soli told fellow legislators.
She says this bill trivializes the obligations of professional counselors: “Do we want to tell a father and mother who have just found out that her life is endangered by a beginning pregnancy that the counselor they’re legally required to consult and may even be looking forward to seeing does not work on weekends?”
Soli says health centers are currently required by South Dakota law to provide counseling upon request of the pregnant woman.
Other legislators point out that a federal injunction has kept that 2011 law from taking force.
Representative Peggy Gibson says House Bill 1237 is insulting to women: “A 72-hour mandatory delay already reflects the demeaning and erroneous assumption that women do not think carefully about abortion and are unable to make responsible decisions without government interference.”
The bill passed the House and now heads to the Senate side for further debate.
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