http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/4653958.html

Last update: March 9, 2004 at 9:43 PM
S.D. governor to OK abortion ban
Chuck Haga, Star Tribune 
  
March 10, 2004 ABOR10 

South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds said Tuesday that he will sign a bill banning most abortions in the state, providing that legislators clarify language to ensure that current restrictions remain in force while the new law is under consideration in the courts.

Legislators will be asked to approve changes in the bill when they return to the Capitol on Monday for the final day of this year's session. If signed by Rounds, a Republican who has favored abortion restrictions, South Dakota's new law would allow abortion only to save the life or health of the mother. An exception for cases involving rape or incest was rejected in both the House and Senate.

In conversations with legislative leaders Tuesday and at a noon news conference at the Capitol in Pierre, Rounds said the bill passed last month does not make it clear enough that the state's current limits on abortion would stay in effect if a court suspended enforcement of the new law. If legislators agree to the changes he requested, he said, he would sign the bill into law.

 Gov. Mike RoundsJoe KafkaAssociated PressBackers of the ban have said they hope it sets up a court fight that leads to a reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Abortion-rights advocates have said they would appeal the law as unconstitutional and immediately ask a federal judge to enjoin the state from enforcing it.

Rep. Matt McCaulley, R-Sioux Falls, wrote the bill with help from the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. The nonprofit organization says it is "dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values and the sanctity of human life."

Women who obtain abortions would not be prosecuted, but anyone who performs an abortion, except to save the life of the mother, would face a felony charge and up to five years in prison.

The new law would declare that human life begins at conception, answering a question the Supreme Court said it wouldn't decide in 1973. It also would find that three decades of legalized abortion have had a significant negative effect, physically and psychologically, on the women of South Dakota, a finding that backers hope can counter "social factors" that have caused the court to affirm its landmark decision.

Leslee Unruh, president and founder of Alpha Center, a Sioux Falls counseling center for women who have had abortions, lobbied for passage of the ban. She said Tuesday she fears that Rounds' decision to send it back to the Legislature for more work could backfire and lead to its defeat.

"It's an incredible, heart-wrenching disappointment," she said. "We'll be back there to see that it gets through, and I hope the governor helps us with that. But if the governor wanted to do something with that language, he should have said something early on."

The law has been opposed by Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and South Dakota, whose Sioux Falls clinic accounts for almost all of the roughly 800 abortions a year performed in South Dakota.

"South Dakotans overwhelmingly believe women -- particularly victims of rape or incest -- ought to have access to safe, legal abortion services and do not support making felons out of doctors who provide such necessary medical care," said Kate Looby, state director. "Governor Rounds' decision to support legislation that criminalizes abortion in South Dakota will threaten women's health and, in the end, do nothing to make abortion rare."

Chuck Haga is at crhaga@startribune.com.