South Dakota votes down law to make performing abortions a felony

A federal appeals court ruled against a separate state law requiring doctors to give patients specific information before getting consent for an abortion.

By Amy Lynn Sorrel, AMNews staff. Nov. 27, 2006.

South Dakota voters rejected the nation's most restrictive abortion ban during the November election, upsetting state lawmakers' efforts to directly challenge Roe v. Wade. But physicians, who remain deeply divided over the government's role in regulating the procedure, say the debate is far from over.

The state law, signed in March, would have made it a felony for doctors to perform abortions, except to save the pregnant woman's life. It did not include exceptions for rape, incest or health concerns. The U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, issued in 1973, established that states can prohibit abortion only after fetal viability and must include exceptions to protect the woman's life and health.

Under the South Dakota law, physicians who performed abortions would have faced up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines.

But abortion-rights advocates mustered enough signatures during a petition campaign to delay the measure's implementation and put it to a popular vote on the Nov. 7 ballot.

South Dakotans rejected the law 56% to 44%. Some doctors opposed the ban. They said it would endanger patients who might experience serious, though not life-threatening, health problems if they carried their pregnancies to term.

"It's sending a message that the government is not going to be able to intervene and dictate how we practice medicine," said Maria C. Bell, MD, a Sioux Falls gynecologic oncologist. She took part in a state task force to study abortion before the law passed.