South Dakota has done something most of the country only talks about. There is no abortion business left in our state, and since Dobbs was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, a law South Dakotans wrote in 2005 has kept it that way. That took decades of work by legislators, pastors, pregnancy center volunteers and families who never gave up.
Now a small movement, most of it from out of state, says we did it wrong. Its members call themselves abolitionists. A better name is prosecutionists. Abortion is already a felony in South Dakota, so their bill would not abolish anything. What it would add is the prosecution of mothers.
They have brought bills to states all over the country. Not a single one has come close to passing. For South Dakota, the bill would be a particularly serious mistake, threatening to reverse some 50 years of pro-life work to protect both mother and unborn baby.
