Ruling keeps abortion question on ballot in South Dakota

A state court judge’s ruling Monday keeps an abortion-rights question on the November ballot in South Dakota.

Judge John Pekas dismissed a lawsuit filed by an anti-abortion group, Life Defense Fund, that sought to have the question removed even though supporters turned in more than enough valid signatures to put it on the ballot.

“They have thrown everything they could dream up to stop the people of South Dakota from voting on this matter,” Adam Weiland, co-founder of Dakotans for Health, said in a statement after the ruling. “This is another failed effort by a small group opposed to giving women the option to terminate pregnancies caused by rape and incest or to address dangerous pregnancies affecting the life and health of women.”

Republican Rep. Jon Hansen, who is a co-chair of the Life Defense Fund, and a lawyer for the group did not immediately return messages from media on Monday.

South Dakota is one of 14 states now enforcing a ban on abortion at every stage of pregnancy, a possibility the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to in 2022, when it overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the nationwide right to abortion.

The amendment supported by Dakotans for Health would bar the state from regulating “a pregnant woman’s abortion decision and its effectuation” in the first trimester, but it would allow second-trimester regulations “only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.”

Since Roe was overturned, all seven statewide abortion-related ballot measures have gone the way abortion-rights groups wanted them to.

This year, similar questions are on the ballots in five states, plus a New York equal rights question that would ban discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes,” among other factors.

Advocates are waiting for signatures to be verified to get questions on the ballot this year in four more states, including Nebraska, where there could be competing questions on abortion rights before voters.