South Dakota is now abortion-free. The state of Plains has become the second state in the nation to have no functioning abortion centers as the latest abortion company, run by Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls, has stopped killing babies in abortions.
South Dakota succeeds Oklahoma as the second abortion-free state in America after Governor Kevin Stitt signed a Texas-style bill banning abortion from conception with a private enforcement mechanism. Texas was the first state to ban abortion, but the abortion ban starts when the unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable after about six weeks, so not all abortions are banned.
The New York Times reported today that the latest center in South Dakota is no longer having abortions, signaling that an out-of-state abortionist from Minnesota is no longer flying over to end babies’ lives before birth.
Although Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land, women in two states, Oklahoma and South Dakota can no longer have legal abortions. In at least one other, Missouri, the only clinic is booked and not accepting new appointments. And in a fourth state, Wisconsin, clinics won’t schedule abortions after the Supreme Court’s term ends at the end of June.
The only clinic in South Dakota, Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls, which also served North Dakota and Minnesota patients, performed its latest abortion on Monday. However, the state has not yet banned it. Abortions in the clinic were already sporadic. A doctor from Minnesota came by about once a month to provide them.
And in some other states, legal abortion has become much more scarce. There were four clinics in Idaho, but Planned Parenthood in Boise closed on June 1. At another, Compassionate Abortion Care in Boise, the lone doctor goes on summer vacation, and staff members tell patients that abortion may not be legal by the time he returns. A third offers only drug abortion.
This isn’t the first time the Planned Parenthood abortion center in Sioux Falls has closed, as it was temporarily closed during COVID in 2020, and the state saw a record number of abortions that year.
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There were only 125 reported abortions in South Dakota in 2020, a 70 percent drop from 2019 and a record low in the state. Chemical abortions fell 65 percent, accounting for 39 percent of all abortions in the state.
Earlier this year, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem signed a pro-life bill banning mail-order abortions.
The new law would require abortion facilities to provide direct medical supervision to mothers when they take abortion drugs to abort their unborn babies and prevent the sale of such medicines by mail that kill babies or injure mothers.
Gov. Kristi Noem, a pro-life Republican, proposed the legislation after the Joe Biden administration lifted safety regulations for the abortion drug mifepristone late last year and began allowing abortion companies to sell it through the mail. After proposing legislation to reinstate the pro-life rule, the South Dakota legislature passed it.
“The two bills I am signing today are crucial because they also protect mothers,” Noem said in a statement. “We must remember that abortion has two victims: the unborn child who loses life and the mother who has to endure the physical and emotional trauma of the procedure.”
The new law requires abortion facilities to provide women with the abortion drug mifepristone and a second drug, misoprostol, taken a day or two later to induce labor by a doctor at an abortion center.
Usually, abortion centers give the first drug, mifepristone, to the woman in person and then send her home with the second drug, misoprostol, to take a day or two later. However, some sell the drugs through the mail without seeing the woman.
The FDA has linked the abortion drug to at least 24 female deaths and 4,000 serious complications between 2000 and 2018. However, under President Barack Obama, the FDA has stopped requiring nonfatal complications from mifepristone to be reported. So the numbers are almost certainly much higher.
New data and studies suggest that the risks of the abortion drug are far more common than abortion activists often claim, with as many as one in 17 requiring hospital treatment. Another study from the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that the number of abortion-related emergency room visits by women using the abortion drug increased by more than 500 percent between 2002 and 2015.
South Dakota also has a law that would completely ban abortion if the US Supreme Court overthrows Roe v. Wade.