South Dakota abortion rights groups collect enough signatures to advance ballot measure
A proposed amendment to enshrine abortion access in South Dakota’s constitution is one step closer to appearing on the November ballot after a coalition of reproductive rights advocates submitted the required number of signatures Wednesday.
Dakotans for Health, the group leading the ballot effort, announced it had collected the signatures of more than 55,000 registered voters — far more than the 35,000 needed to move forward with getting the proposal on the ballot.
Officials with the group told NBC News they had anticipated significant resistance from abortion-rights opponents in the red state and aimed to collect far more signatures than were required by the submission deadline of next Tuesday. The group said it had already collected 50,000 signatures of registered voters by December.
The group is seeking to place a proposed constitutional amendment on the general election ballot in South Dakota that would make abortion legal in all situations in the first trimester of a pregnancy.
The proposal would allow “regulation” by the state of abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy, but such regulation “must be reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.”
The amendment would allow “regulation or prohibition” by the state in the third trimester, except in cases when physician has determined that the care would be necessary to “preserve the life or health” of the woman.
If voters pass it, the measure "will restore women’s personal freedom and overturn South Dakota’s blanket abortion ban by writing into our constitution the protections contained in the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision,” Dakotans for Health co-founder Rick Weiland said.
“The Freedom Amendment is about empowering individuals to make deeply personal decisions about their own bodies and futures,” Weiland said. “Every woman deserves the freedom to choose whether to terminate or continue a pregnancy."
If it passes, the amendment would effectively undo the state’s near-total ban on abortion, which snapped back into effect after Roe v. Wade was struck down in 2022. The law, which abortion advocates say is among the harshest in the U.S., prohibits all abortions except when necessary to save the woman’s life.
South Dakota is one of 11 states where organizers are seeking to enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions via citizen-led ballot initiatives. The measures are officially on the ballot in Maryland, New York and Florida.
Even though the signature threshold was reached, major obstacles remain for abortion-rights supporters in South Dakota.
Abortion-rights opponents in the state have aggressively challenged the group’s activity in court for over a year. And even if the measure does reach the ballot in November, there’s no guarantee it will pass in the conservative state, which Donald Trump won by 26 points in the 2020 election.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
