South Dakota Will Begin Enforcing Law Telling Women Abortion Kills Children
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 17, 2008
Pierre, SD (LifeNews.com) — The state of South Dakota will begin enforcing an abortion law that tells women the practice will kill a unique human being. South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long says the law will go into effect on Saturday following a decision earlier this month by a federal appeals court saying it’s constitutional.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the statute, which requires abortion practitioners to tell women the truth about what happens in an abortion.
Then, on Thursday, Planned Parenthood’s application to enjoin the statute following the appeals court decision failed.
“In my 24 years of being involved in the pro-life movement, this is the greatest victory," Leslee Unruh, the head of a pregnancy center in Sious Falls and the leader of the campaign for an abortion ban in the state, told LifeNews.com.
"Thank you to the South Dakota legislators, Governor and legal team," she added.
The measure specifically tells them to tell women "the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," defined as a human being.
It also requires that the abortion practitioner give women the contact information of a local pregnancy center, as well other information about her health risks and pregnancy support available.
The Court vacated a temporary injunction which had been issued by a lower court against the 2005 South Dakota informed consent law on abortion.
The federal appeals court cited the portion of the Supreme Court’s recent Gonzales v. Carhart decision on partial-birth abortion referring to the post-abortion problems women experience.
The court indicated "some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.”
After the decision, Tracy Reynolds, of Operation Outcry, told LifeNews.com she was excited by the ruling because women will get information about the medical, mental health and spiritual problems they may face after an abortion.
Otherwise, Planned Parenthood, which runs the only abortion business in the state, likely wouldn’t inform them of those sometimes serious consequences.
She says post-abortion women “are extremely pleased that courts are now listening to real women who have been hurt by abortion and beginning to protect women from abortionists, rather than listening only to Planned Parenthood.”
“This citation of post-abortive women’s pain by the courts demonstrates again that the voices of the women of Operation Outcry are beginning to have a deep and long lasting impact on the courts of the United States,” she added.
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