South Dakota's latest abortion law was signed by Gov. Dennis Daugaard on Tuesday. S.D. abortion law wakes up activists

The ramifications of sweeping new abortion restrictions in South Dakota may well be more political than practical.

The new law has mobilized abortion rights activists — and been cheered by abortion rights opponents — but it’s unclear what practical effect it will have in a state that already has only one abortion provider and the country’s overall lowest abortion rate.


For years, the state already has had some of the most aggressive restrictions on abortion.

This latest law, signed by Gov. Dennis Daugaard Tuesday, institutes a 72-hour waiting period and a visit to a crisis pregnancy center before the procedure. The waiting period is the longest in the country.

"I think everyone agrees with the goal of reducing abortion by encouraging consideration of other alternatives," Daugaard said in a written statement. "I hope that women who are considering an abortion will use this three-day period to make good choices."

But while abortion foes celebrate the ruling, abortion rights supporters are reacting, too.

“We have seen an increase in donations to Planned Parenthood and that’s deeply appreciated right now,” says Sarah Stoesz, executive director of Planned Parenthood of South Dakota. Her clinic is the only abortion provider in the state, and it is staffed about one day each week by doctors who fly in from other states. “It’s coming from across the country and not just in the state.”

NARAL Pro-Choice South Dakota has also seen an uptick in activism, with their website traffic quadrupling in the past day.

“Our phones have been ringing off the hook with calls from South Dakotans who are looking for ways to fight this latest outrage,” said Alisha Sedor, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice South Dakota. “We will channel our activists’ energy into a campaign to engage South Dakotans about how this law harms women. Frankly, voters are just tired of legislators who keep devising more and more ways to intrude upon the doctor-patient relationship."

South Dakota has long been in the forefront of legislation to restrict access to the procedure. In the past two elections, anti-abortion activists have pushed for statewide abortion bans that ultimately failed to obtain enough support.

Prior to Tuesday, the state already had a 24-hour waiting period for abortions and laws mandating that a woman be offered the opportunity to view a sonogram of her fetus.

Those restrictions play into South Dakota having the lowest abortion rate in the country, according to statistics from the Guttmacher Institute and the Centers for Disease Control. The local Planned Parenthood affiliate estimates that 0.1 percent of abortions nationwide are performed in the state and, of the 707 abortions performed in 2007, 94.9 percent of the procedures were performed during the first trimester.

Approximately one out of seven women in South Dakota seeking an abortion leaves the state for the procedure, according to the Centers for Disease Control Abortion Surveillance report in 2007.

“Women have become very adept at navigating these obstacles,” says Elizabeth Nash, who tracks state reproductive health policy for the Guttmacher Institute. “Not that they should have to, but they have. This data says to me that, women are leaving … between the combination of restriction and access, the climate has become very hostile.”

The future for the state’s only abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, remains unclear.

Planned Parenthood’s Stoesz says her board will meet next week to discuss both the practical and ethical implications of complying with the new legislation. She said they are likely to decide to pursue an injunction of the law, which takes effect July 1 and discuss what it would mean to comply with the new restrictions.

While Stoesz believes they could potentially work out the logistical issues of complying with a 72-hour waiting period, she does not see a viable work-around for the provision requiring them to refer patients to crisis pregnancy centers.

“I want to stop short of saying we’re going to close the clinic, but I am saying that the ethics of referring someone to a place whose mission is to convince them to not have an abortion is not something that we can do,” she says.