South Dakota Can't Stop ALL Abortions
Keep your ideas of morality off my body. Indian tribe says "stick it" to South Dakota's draconian idea.
Tribal leader rallies for abortion clinic on reservation:
Oglala Sioux Tribe President Cecelia Fire Thunder says a clinic on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation could provide abortions if South Dakota’s new abortion ban goes into effect.
“We’re working on it,” Fire Thunder said in a telephone interview Friday. “This is a free-choice issue. If I were in that situation, I’d want somewhere to go where I’d be taken care of.”
The new South Dakota law bans all abortions except to save the life of the mother — with no exceptions for rape or incest.
Fire Thunder said the state law would not apply to the reservation. “We’re a sovereign nation,” she said.
The new law is set to go into effect July 1, but a court challenge almost certainly will delay it, and opponents of the law are already gathering signatures to put it on the ballot in November.
Fire Thunder, in fact, is one of 15 co-leaders of the new South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, which on Friday announced a statewide campaign to overturn the new law.
South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long declined to comment on the proposal, saying he likely would have to write a description of the new law for ballots in November.
Long said that major crimes committed on reservations come under state jurisdiction if they are committed by non-Indians against non-Indians. Other major crimes fall under federal law.