South Dakota Right to Life pleased with progress in SD; abortion reduced 359%

Pat Powers

I had a note today from South Dakota Right to Life who asked me to post the following:

SD Right-to-Life is incredibly grateful for the work our legislature, Attorney General and courts have done to help us reduce the devastation of abortion in SD, and look forward to continuing to work with them until abortion is not only illegal in South Dakota, but unthinkable.

29 thoughts on “South Dakota Right to Life pleased with progress in SD; abortion reduced 359%”

  2. Or maybe, the increased use and advocacy of safe sex since 1982, due to the AIDS epidemic, has significantly resulted in a decrease in unwanted pregnancies…. How about that one….?

    1. Why would you say “safe sex” applies to South Dakota more than to other states, Mr. Stable Genius?

      The entire abortion industry depends on secrecy and deception. In the places where public debates are held, the pro-life cause always advances.

      1. Well, first of all, “Mr. Stable Genius” was smart enough to interject the word “maybe” into the speculation and not “because.”

        Plus, abortion rates are going down nationally. I believe the overall decline is 200% nationally and these stats include a lot of “Blue States.”

        South Dakota is not unique to the decline. Safe sex, sex education, enhancement of WIC programs, and the ever declining stigma that was once attached to unwed mothers have all attributed to these stats.

        And do these RTL stats include abortions by South Dakota women, which have been performed outside of the state?…. A reality which would be enhanced by more restrictive measures here within the state, would it not?

        And your “secrecy and deception” comment, and its logic, leaves one asking why major anti-abortion legislation hasn’t been passed in recent years, especially since when South Dakotans in ’08 and ’06 said “No” to the RTL agenda twice via referendums…. And even this blog site in recent years asked the question, via post, why abortion was no longer on the radar and being discussed….

  3. Colorado has reduced abortion by 64% with education and contraception availability… Of course to pro-birthers education and contraception are also evil….I didn’t see those two things mentioned above so I assume the abortion laws are claimed to be the reason for the decrease here? A bit hypocritical that so many anti- government pro-birthers want government forced pregnancy…. I remember before legal abortion a pregnant teen might get sent away for a few months because of the shame to the family and return with a kid like nobody noticed….. The holier than thou crowd would refer to them as tramp, slut, little bastard…..Nothings changed.. Force that pregnancy, then when there is a breathing kid the same folks wanting forced pregnancy whine about a penny of their taxes going to SNAP and WIC….—– It is a womans Constitutional right , IT is none of your business…..

    1. Pro-birthers. Yeah, I guess I’m more for birth than for the murder of the child in the womb, but I’m just funny that way.

  4. It’s always interesting to respond to comments from people that don’t have the courtesy to use their real name.

    Over the long term, numbers of abortions, abortion rates and ratios are down across the US.

    Given the mixed numbers of abortion rates and the wide geographic and cultural variations between states, it’s difficult to determine any single broad explanation for all states.

    The likely explanation is that local factors come into play.

    Virtually every authoritative source on both sides of the issue agree that, at least partially, state legislation regulating the abortion industry has impacted abortion rates.

    Of course, other factors, likely many factors come into play.

    In South Dakota, we believe it likely there is correlation that the informed consent law and the anticoercion law appear to have contributed to marked declines in the year in which they were enacted and afterward.

    If you want to try to understand an explanation for the national trends, consider an analysis by the CDC, which said:

    “Multiple factors influence the incidence of abortion, including access to health care services and contraception; the availability of abortion providers; state regulations, such as mandatory waiting periods, parental involvement laws, and legal restrictions on abortion providers; increasing acceptance of non-marital childbearing; shifts in racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. population; and changes in the economy and the resulting impact on fertility preferences and access to health care services.”

    Some of these we have seen come into play in South Dakota. Our state parental notification law requires teens to discuss their unintended pregnancies with their parents rather than to try to cover them up with clandestine abortions. Voluntary and informed consent are now required in SD after state-directed counseling, including the opportunity for a woman to view a sonogram of her unborn child and allow her better observe what happens in the womb even at the earliest stages.

    How much of the reduction in abortion in SD is due to legislative efforts by pro-lifers passing laws that make abortion’s risks and reality plain, how much is due to education which makes knowledge of the humanity of the unborn child common, how much is due to outreach which makes realistic alternatives to abortion accessible, is hard to quantify precisely.

    What is quantifiable is that SD leads the nation in the fewest per capita number of abortions.

    All that said, abortions and abortion rates and ratios are down across the board, and more pregnant moms are choosing life for themselves and their unborn children.

    And that is very good news.

    2. People have reasons for not using their names…..You tell me what difference it makes in their opinions or questions asked of you?

      If you were in a burning building and had the time to save either a cylinder containing 100 fertilized eggs or ONE 2 year old which would you save? By the claims of pro-birthers that would be 100 babies or one…If you believe your claims, you would leave the 2 year old to die an agonizing death and rescue the 100, right?

    3. Fred,

      The Federalist Papers were initially written anonymously by some of our most brilliant fore fathers.

      Nixon was brought down by “Deep Throat” and not Mark Felt.

      Anonymity is a protected right under the US Constitution.

      When your Republican President settled with “Stormy Daniels,” the settlement was done with potential plaintiff and defendant aliases and not with the actual names.

      Whenever someone tries to indict the messenger instead of the message, that is just further proof that the opponent cannot handle the message nor refute it.

      In conclusion, the most indictable thing about the RTL stats mentioned above, is that unless you can qualify the abortions which happen in other states, which would have happen in South Dakota less greater restrictions, then you cannot claim that South Dakota’s greater restrictions have prevented abortions themselves.

      In fact, the RTL suggestion that stricter abortion laws in South Dakota have significantly reduced South Dakota’s abortion rate only further feeds the suspicion that many of those “prevented abortions” are merely found in the abortion stats of other states, thus making South Dakota look better than it should….

      1. Very Stable:

        You can present all the theories you want. It is a quantifiable fact that SD has the lowest per capita abortion rate of any state in the US.

        It’s not “just” the overwhelming pro-life legislators that South Dakotans elect year after year, nor the pro-life legislation enacted, but a combination of education and culture that has led to the lowest per capita rate. For example, how many other states can you drive through and see pro-life billboards on the outskirts of towns? Those represent the expressions of local communities all over our state. The movement is organic.

        1. Oh, Fred, those folks putting up those pro-life billboards are just a bunch of backwards hicks, not hyper-intelligent and unfettered by the bounds of a higher morality like VSG is.

        2. So if a South Dakota puts up a pro communist billboard in South Dakota, then that means that a lot of South Dakotans are a bunch of communists?…. There is an atheist in Sioux Falls who has a lot of billboards around town, does that mean that most Sioux Fallsians are atheists?

          Oh, and thanks for calling them “theories, that means they are supported by facts and not just a hypothesis….

      2. He’s your president too, VSG, whether you like it or not, just like Obabma was my president, terrible as his eight years were. Thank goodness the voters didn’t make that type of mistake again in 2016.

        1. How did our President get entered into this debate? Do you know something about “Stormy” that I don’t know?

  5. The math seems off. (Original-New)/Original = (1693-472)/1693 =.72 or 72%. Am I missing something, shouldn’t it be a 72% reduction?

    1. Why do I feel like I am being baited with the idea that if I am pro-life, I have to be against the death penalty?

  8. Very Stable,

    I have no problem with people using a consistent pseudonym as the means to communicate ideas in the spirit of Madison, Hamilton et.al.

    What is not consistent with that spirit are:

    1). Being one of hundreds of people using the same moniker (anonymous) as it shields the poster from having a totality of multiple thoughts vetted for consistency, Logic, and truthfulness. It is rude.

    2). Using a moniker to primarily attack (in one or multiple posts) another’s credibility or character when they are cowardly shielding themselves from the same evaluation. It is cowardly.

    3). Using “anonymous” in multiple posts to give the impression their view is more widely held than it is. One infamous legislator uses this technique (when not using proxy servers). It is dishonest.

    P.S. the reason Madison et. al. published the Federalist Papers under a pseudonym to promote the Constitution was not fear of retaliation (we had won the War long before and governing under the Articles) but it was a joint effort and they wanted it to have a reception as more than the sum of the parts (author). If I remember correctly it was lawyer and future Chief Justice who recommended it.

    1. Obama used a fake email during his term as a lousy president, so I don’t know what VSG is complaining about. Isn’t Obama the example for us all of what is good, right, and best for America?

    2. You raise some good points, because by having an actual or unique alias other than just “anonymous,” you do establish a potentially subjected persona, which others can challenge over time as the “actual or unique” comments build. Where as the generic “anonymous” allows one to hide. But it seems to me that the real purpose of a blog like this is to have a genuine debate of issues – and regardless of the commenters names – it is the debate that matters and not the actual names of the commenters.

      Now, if a commenter is abusive, then it becomes the duty of the actual owner of the blog to police such comments based on their guidelines – and the failing to police should not make the efficacy of anonymity itself indictable.

      As far as the Federalist Papers, I was of the understanding that they were initially written in anonymity to possibly receive greater acceptance or to at least gain the opportunity to be heard out. Although, the war had been won. The battle between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans was building – and I would allege exists to this day – which require this anonymity in order to achieve a civil debate…. Hence there own form of “policing,” I guess….

  9. VSG,

    I think you just described Jay’s motive for being written under a pseudonym in a different way and different focus (sum of parts argument). However, I think Madison is the one who said it also worked because not all three always agreed on specifics or wording (I seem to remember only one supported lifetime Justice appointments and another supported House confirmation. Somehow we got to what we have out of compromise nobody really wanted to own). This allowed the idea to get out there under a single name yet have nuance.

    I agree names are not important but just as the founder’s had identifiable monikers, those who post as anonymous and link themselves to founders are being duplicitous.

  10. Hey Fred. Do you have any insight as to why 4 Republicans voted against SB110?

    I see Soholt (not surprisingly), Peters, Curd and Tideman voted against the bill. Are these Republicans being challenged by the SDGOP or you? Very disappointing.

Comments are closed.