[SPAN class=articleTitle]Abortion? Never was much choice in S.D.[/SPAN]
[!--subtitle--][!--top author info--][SPAN class=articleByline][TABLE width="100%" align=center border=0][TBODY][TR][TD class=articleByline][!-- overline--][SPAN class=articleByline][A class=articleByline href="mailto:
[email protected]"][FONT color=#000000]By Michael Riley
Denver Post Staff Writer[/FONT][/A][/SPAN][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE]
[/SPAN][TABLE class=articleBody width="100%" align=center border=0][TBODY][TR][TD align=middle colSpan=3][/TD][/TR][TR][TD class=articleBody align=left colSpan=3][!-- IMAGE IN REGION Position1 --][TABLE class=articleImageBox cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 rules=none width=120 align=right border=0 vspace="3" hspace="3"][TBODY][TR][TD colSpan=3][img height=5 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][/TR][TR][TD][img height=1 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][TD][!-- [img src='http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2006/0305/20060305_013358_0305abortion.jpg' WIDTH='120' ] --][A onclick="OpenWindow('/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?imageId=3571065','image_window');" href="http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_3570166#"][FONT color=#000000][img title="" alt="" src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2006/0305/20060305_013358_0305abortion.jpg" width=200 border=0][/FONT][/A][/TD][TD][img height=1 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][/TR][TR][TD][img]http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][TD class=articleImageCaption]Carrie Sanchez, 32 and mother of three, cries during counseling in Sioux Falls, S.D., last week. She said she had an abortion while a college student and is now dealing with her feelings. (Post / John Epperson) [/TD][TD][img]http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][/TR][TR][TD colSpan=3][img height=5 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=1 border=0][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE]
Sioux Falls, S.D. - When 20-year-old Courtney found out three weeks ago that she was pregnant, it hit the single mother - already struggling with a 1-year-old - like a brick. She cried, she talked to friends, and she came to a heart- wrenching decision: She wanted an abortion. Then the real work began. She had to take off two days from her mechanic's job in a small South Dakota town, find a ride and travel six hours one way to the state's only abortion clinic. Some friends in her place had left the state. Others kept a baby they didn't want. "You see the billboards. You know there's a stigma here," said Courtney, who, waiting in a Sioux Falls abortion clinic, would give only her first name. "This is supposed to be a country of freedom. I don't think you should have to feel humiliated about a choice that is best for your own life," she said.
Abortion doc wore armor For South Dakota abortion foes who last month won passage of a bill that, if signed by the governor, would virtually ban abortion in the state, Courtney's predicament is their victory. Even if the new legislation is tied up in a years-long court battle leading to the Supreme Court, South Dakota is already among the hardest states in the country in which to get an abortion. The last local doctor to regularly provide the procedure, who carried a Colt .45 and wore body armor, retired 10 years ago. Now, the identities of doctors flown to the Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls once a week from Minneapolis are kept secret. Local doctors supportive [!-- IMAGE IN REGION Position2 --][TABLE class=articleImageBox cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 rules=none width=120 align=left border=0 vspace="3" hspace="3"][TBODY][TR][TD colSpan=3][img height=5 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][/TR][TR][TD][img height=1 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][TD][!-- [img src='http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2006/0305/20060305_013507_0305abortion1.jpg' WIDTH='120' ] --][A onclick="OpenWindow('/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?imageId=3571066','image_window');" href="http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_3570166#"][img title="" alt="" src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2006/0305/20060305_013507_0305abortion1.jpg" width=200 border=0][/A][/TD][TD][img height=1 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][/TR][TR][TD][img]http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][TD class=articleImageCaption]A physician who has just flown into Sioux Falls, S.D., from Minneapolis gets ready for appointments Tuesday in a room at the Planned Parenthood clinic. The identities of doctors brought in to perform abortions is kept secret for their protection. (Post / John Epperson) [/TD][TD][img]http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][/TR][TR][TD colSpan=3][img height=5 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=1 border=0][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE]of abortion rights say it's not worth the economic ruin and professional exile that performing the procedure would cost them. "It's an economic issue," said Dr. Tom Looby, a Sioux Falls obstetrician-gynecologist and the father of the state's Planned Parenthood director. "The unfortunate thing is people on the other side have been very capable at controlling the social climate around" the procedure, he said. Indeed, national groups on both sides of the debate say that all the attention paid to the South Dakota bill masks a potentially more important fact: Here, as in many parts of the country, a decade-long strategy combining pressure on doctors with the lobbying of state lawmakers has already dramatically reduced the number of places where abortions are available and the ranks of doctors willing to perform them. Nationally, 87 percent of counties have no abortion provider, while the number of abortion clinics has shrunk from nearly 2,400 in 1992 to about 1,800 in 2000, the last year for which statistics are available, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Guttmacher Institute. (In Colorado, 78 percent of all counties have no abortion providers.) The strategy has been so successful that several anti- abortion groups counseled South Dakota legislators against voting for the new law, which would make it illegal to perform abortions in South Dakota except to save a mother's life, even in a case of rape or incest. The legislation contradicts Roe vs. Wade and is the first state effort to ban abortion under the newly configured Supreme Court. [!-- IMAGE IN REGION Position3 --][TABLE class=articleImageBox cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 rules=none width=120 align=right border=0 vspace="3" hspace="3"][TBODY][TR][TD colSpan=3][img height=5 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][/TR][TR][TD][img height=1 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][TD][!-- [img src='http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2006/0305/20060305_013543_0305abortg.gif' WIDTH='120' ] --][A onclick="OpenWindow('/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?imageId=3571068','image_window');" href="http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_3570166#"][img title="" alt="" src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2006/0305/20060305_013543_0305abortg.gif" width=200 border=0][/A][/TD][TD][img height=1 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][/TR][TR][TD][img]http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][TD class=articleImageCaption][/TD][TD][img]http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=5 border=0][/TD][/TR][TR][TD colSpan=3][img height=5 src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/std/clear.gif" width=1 border=0][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE]Some activists fear the Supreme Court might rule on a challenge to the law by upholding Roe vs. Wade again. "This is like putting all your chips on number 27 and spinning a roulette wheel. There is so much potentially bad that could happen, and it's not necessary to do it," said Daniel Mc Conchie of the Chicago-based Americans United for Life, the country's oldest national anti-abortion group.
First - and proud of it But anti-abortion activists who have been working in South Dakota for years say they were unwilling to let the moment pass, potentially handing it to one of several other states, including Mississippi and Missouri, that are considering similar bills. "We figured someone had to be the first state," said Robert Rogier, executive director of the South Dakota Family Policy Center. "There is some righteous pride in the fact ... that we're the first ones storming the beach." It's an assault that has been in the making for years. A prairie state of farm towns and few cities, South Dakota has always been conservative, said Bob Burns, a political science professor at South Dakota State University. But before the Supreme Court's legalization of abortion in 1973, the brand was one of "good old-fashioned fiscal conservatism," he said. "It never had that moralistic tone to it pre-Roe v. Wade," Burns said. But a combination of factors has changed that. Membership in evangelical churches has grown dramatically. The state's Roman Catholic Church has been led by a succession of politically active bishops. And term limits
[/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE]helped sweep a group of lawmakers into the state capital of Pierre who are increasingly willing to position the state at the heart of the country's culture wars.
Last year, legislators convened an abortion task force that spent months collecting testimony and data to provide a scientific basis for overturning Roe, including information about fetal pain and DNA fingerprinting. But Dr. Maria Bell, a task force member and gynecologic oncologist in Sioux Falls, said abortion opponents outnumbered supporters on the panel 2 to 1, and she dismissed much of the testimony as unscientific. Bell also said she understands the pressure on local doctors not to perform abortions. She's faced some of it herself. One colleague has already stopped referring patients to her because of her activism. A recent threatening e-mail she received was passed on to police. The result, Bell and others say, is increased risks being taken by South Dakota women with unintended pregnancies. Some travel to nearby states such as Montana and Iowa, where abortion access is easier. But a growing number, say Planned Parenthood officials in Sioux Falls, are turning to the 21st century equivalent of back- alley abortions - the Internet. They go online to order drugs thought to induce abortions, but that can have significant health risks. "Does it happen? Yes. Is it dangerous? Absolutely," said Kate Looby, director of South Dakota Planned Parenthood. "This isn't the 1950s. This is 2006. But what we're seeing is an awful lot like a past I think everyone had thought we left behind," she said.
Advocates fight back Across the country, abortion advocates are determined not to let that happen. The state's tourism board has been flooded with calls from people vowing to shun the state if the bill is signed. A Wisconsin group, the Women's Medical Fund, has threatened to organize a national boycott of South Dakota tourist sites, threatening a $2 billion a year industry. Residents here say they are ready for the fight. "If that's the way they feel, then they shouldn't come here anyway. Maybe that's not a nice thing to say, but you have to fight for what's right," said Lexie Vogel, who farms near Hoven, almost 300 miles west of Sioux City but a world away. A town of 500, Hoven is dominated by its massive church - "the cathedral on the prairie" - built by the German migrants who settled this area in the early 20th century. It is still more than 85 percent Catholic, and the church's influence pervades even the tiny main street: There's a church-run thrift shop and food bank, a prominent Knights of Columbus hall, and the Holy Infant Hospital, which until recently was church- owned and whose only doctor, a Filipino Catholic, doesn't perform abortions as a matter of personal belief. "I was probably a senior in high school before I realized there was another religion," said Susan Vail, a retired hog buyer who now works at the local thrift store. "We were all raised that way. There wasn't a question in one's mind, what was right and what was wrong." Vail admits that even in a town this size, young people do get pregnant accidentally. But if anyone here has had an abortion, she's never heard of it. "You can raise that child or give it to someone who would love it. There is no third choice. That's just who we are. That's just what we believe."
Staff writer Michael Riley can be reached at 303-820-1614 or [A href="mailto:[email protected]"][email protected][/A].
