Aborti0WNED

Since nobody else has pointed this out. All four abortion laws proposed in the legislature have died.

What was that they said last year? If last years ban failed it would set back the anti-abortion groups by about twenty years.

Maybe next year our legislature could work on some better ways to reduce abortion, like a comprehensive prevention bill.

New Abortion Ban Dies in Senate Committee

The Senate State Affairs Committee voted down the only abortion ban left in this years legislature on an 8 to 1 vote today. The only person voting for it was Gene Abdallah.

Attorney General Larry Long also made a comment to the Argus today "“We were unable to find solutions we were happy with . . . I’m not happy with the solutions in the current bill.’’

So the AG does not like the ban, the South Dakota Right to Life group is against this ban and the Senate shot it down with all but one vote.

But now the morality police in the legislature are going to try to force this to a vote in the Senate, they think they have enough votes to force the issue. Time to write your Senators and tell them enough is enough, get back to business.

They may very well have the 12 they need to force this to a vote depending on how some of the Senators feel about beating the voters over the head with an unpopular issue. If they could muster the 18 to pass it is another issue with a big maybe hanging over it.

Does anyone really want to go through two years of the angry and ugly cloud that hung over everything during the last public vote?

Abortion Ban Passes House

HB 1293 passed the house 45 to 25.
Now what the Senate committee will do with it is next.

THREE Abortion Bans Die In The Senate

Three down and one left to go!

The Senate Committee reviewing these two bans killed both in one swoop dashing Roger "orange jumpsuit" Hunt's dreams of Southdakotaistan.

HB 1296 The Sonogram Bill, aka: Roger Hunt wants pictures of your uterus bill died after passing the house.

SB 172 aka: The 44 point type bill died in committee. This one would have forced clinics to post a rather large sign telling people nobody can force them to have a medical procedure (abortion) against their will. Well duh. Is that pile of forms people sign to see a doctor are for lining the cat box?

SB 172 aka: Make doctors Leslee Unruh's parrot bill. This one would have forced doctors to also tell patients what was on the sign in the lobby.

So three out of four gone in one day. These were supposed to be the moderate approach preferred by the SD Right to Life group and legislators like Brock Greenfield.

The last bill HR 1293 is scheduled to be voted on the House floor this week.

SD Legislature: Keystone Cops Edition

There seems to be a possible glitch in the newest abortion ban attempt recently passed by the House State Affairs Committee. Nobody is sure if what they did is constitutional according to state law. Not the taking away people's civil rights part. The part about taking a law directly to the people for a vote.

Keloland is reporting that Gov. Rounds has raised questions about the legality of taking something direct from the legislature to the voters that is not a constitutional amendment or an item that has been petitioned by the people to put it on the ballot.

Seriously. Nobody checked. None of our lawmakers that created the ban, none on the committee bothered to see if what they were proposing was even possible.

This is what you get when you have cowboys and weasely hack lawyers writing laws.

SDWC is on the case, doing some research to see if this is even possible. He did note that in some quick research he could not find a case of this being successfully done anywhere in the last decade. A couple of bills tried it but those bills never passed the legislature to find out.

Just remember that the guy who took this on this year who is the key sponsor of this mess is Gordon "women are like cattle" Howie. Of course the usual suspects like Bill "sodomized virgin" Napoli and Roger "orange jumpsuit" Hunt were there too.

Abortion Ban Debate Monday In House

The new "Handmaids Tale" version abortion ban HB 1293 will be heard Monday Feb. 12th at 10am by the House State Affairs Committee. Audio of the committee is posted on SDPB after the meeting.

If anyone knows if a live video feed will be available please let us know. SDPB does not appear to be scheduling broadcast of the meeting or archiving it on their site.

Planned Parenthood is running a contact your legislator campaign. Use the link to easily contact your legislator and urge them to get back to the real business of our state instead of dangerous, unconstitutional bans. Since South Dakota already has a trigger ban on the books this antic in the legislature is solely their attempt to force our state into paying for a multi-million dollar federal court fight for their pet cause.