As guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice said on Wednesday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” the “abortion activists [are] at it again,” and “they’ve got their sights now set on the state of South Dakota.” What Hice is referring to is the recent push for something called Amendment G, a modification to the state’s constitution that would allow abortion up until birth, while also removing health and safety measures for the women involved. It’s “so outrageous,” Hice noted, that “even Planned Parenthood, to this point at least, has not gotten on board.”
Caroline Woods, a spokesperson for Life Defense Fund (LDF), joined the discussion, and she emphasized that not only is the amendment “very radical,” but it’s “going on our election [ballot] this November fifth.” To break it down, Woods highlighted four areas of concern regarding Amendment G.
First, she said, “It allows abortion up to all nine months,” which is a concern in itself. Second, it would mean that parents “have no right to know whether [their] daughter is coerced or forced into an abortion.” Third, “If you’re [a] doctor or nurse, you have no conscience protections with this.” If the state were to tell a medical professional to give someone an abortion, there would no longer be any protections aiding that professional to decline the operation. And finally, Woods emphasized that the amendment, in “horrendous” fashion, takes away the inspections that ensure the environment is clean and safe. “So,” she added, “this is a very radical amendment. And it’s something that we in South Dakota are not on board with.”
As Hice pointed out, it’s not just “radical” and “dangerous,” but it “strips away” constitutional rights. “Where in the world did this come from? What is the force behind it?” he asked, and “How did this even get to be offered as a constitutional amendment?” According to Woods, Dakotans for Health is responsible.
She explained how the pro-abortion group, which promotes “the furthest thing from health or safety,” is guilty of “cheating and lying their way to getting enough petition signatures from South Dakotans to put this on the ballot.” And what exactly did they do? As Woods put it, “In South Dakota, election law says you … cannot leave a petition unattended. They did not do that.” Additionally, “they lied” about what it was by saying it was “going to restore Roe v Wade.” These troublesome circumstances are what Woods and LDF are exposing and “fighting … in the courts … right now.”
Hice asked, concerning people who may have signed the petition under false pretenses, “Is there any recourse for these citizens, especially when considering it was “not what they thought it was when they signed it?” Woods responded that the legislature has passed a bill allowing petitions signers to take their name off if they “were deceived and lied to.” However, she added, that does not change the fact that Amendment G is already set to go “onto the ballot here soon.”
Ultimately, Woods explained, LDF is “fighting in the courts [over whether] this amendment should actually be on the ballot. And if it is on the ballot, we are asking the court, because they have lied and deceived to get those signatures, that they would not count this measure on the ballot at all.” In addition to his hope that this amendment is blocked from being on the ballot, Hice took note of the “horrifying precedent this sets if it is allowed to move forward.”
He continued, if this amendment progresses, it sets the “precedent that anyone can lie on an amendment to gather a bunch of signatures. … [T]his is a very dangerous path to go down if this petition is allowed to stand.” Beyond that, Woods emphasized how 73% of Americans “do not actually want abortion after 15 weeks.” Considering this, it stands to read that if “the majority of Americans think this is too radical and too far,” then South Dakotans have every right to feel the same way.
“It is a horrible, radical, awful abortion up to birth amendment that we just cannot see in our state,” Woods contended. “It’s something that we do not want in South Dakota. It does not represent our values and is against life and protections for mothers.” And while Woods believes there is “a very good chance here of winning … we need Americans to step in and to help. We need South Dakotans to vote the right way. We need people to know the truth of how this even got on there, and … how we can fight against this.”
As Hice emphasized in a separate interview with Dr. Donna Harrison, the truth is necessary to proclaim because “the abortion industry, quite frankly, has worked overtime to distort the medical definition of abortion.” And “they do this by blurring the lines between intentional killing of a child in an abortion … versus the tragic, unintended death of a child, be it through a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy.” And the reality, as Harrison helped explain, is that abortion is never actually necessary.
Harrison, the director of research for the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, clarified that an “elective abortion is a procedure done with the purpose of making sure … that [a] living, healthy baby comes out dead. That’s what an abortion is, and that’s been testified to by abortionists before the Supreme Court.”
But “when you have an ectopic pregnancy or another situation that threatens the mother’s life,” she continued, that’s a procedure where “you have to separate that mom and baby” under the pretense that the baby won’t live.” This, she urged, “is not an abortion.” Additionally, there are no states in the entire country which forbid the … lifesaving treatment for the mom.” However, the “abortion industry is afraid of the actual definition of abortion … and that’s something we have to understand.”
It really is “black and white,” Hice said. And as Harrison pointed out, it must be, because “we need to be black and white in our laws and [in] the laws across the country.” More than that, “people [need] to understand what their law actually says, word for word.” In doing so, it takes away the abortion activist’s ability to “provide even one example of any law in any state that forbids lifesaving treatment for the mother, or forbids ectopic pregnancy treatment, or forbids treatment of miscarriages.” The abortion industry relies on “blinding snow,” as Harrison put it, and knowing the laws through and through is part of how pro-lifers can melt down their arguments.
Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.
