Earlier this month, the South Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill known as the “Med Ed Bill” aimed at educating doctors and women on what the state’s law allows regarding abortion during pregnancies in which the mother’s health is in danger.
Most preborn children are protected from abortion in South Dakota. The sole exception allows abortion to protect the life of the mother (though induced abortion is never medically necessary). The Med Ed Bill doesn’t change the law, but seeks to help ensure that the law is properly understood.
The law would “require the creation of an informational video and other materials describing the state’s abortion law and medical care for a pregnant woman experiencing life-threatening or health-threatening medical conditions.” Those materials would have to describe the state’s pro-life law as well as acts that do and do not constitute an abortion. The information must also include the most common medical conditions that can put a pregnant woman’s life or health in danger, the generally accepted standards of care applicable to the treatment of those conditions, and the criteria that a doctor, using reasonable medical judgment, would use in determining the best treatment for the pregnant woman and her preborn child or children.
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“South Dakota is showing the rest of the nation how to protect women’s lives by making it abundantly clear that pregnant women can and must receive timely emergency care under our pro-life law,” said Kelsey Pritchard, state public affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “Abortion activists have sown confusion on this point around the nation to justify their agenda for no limits on abortion. This lie not only deceives but puts women in danger, and a Med Ed policy is the solution.”
The bill must also pass in the state Senate before going to the desk of Gov. Kristi Noem. If she were to sign it, the Department of Health would have until September 1 to produce and post the video and materials to its website after consulting with the state attorney general and “stakeholders having medical and legal expertise.”
In addition, pro-abortion politicians in the state failed to advance a bill that would have made abortion a right. It failed in a 7-0 vote in its first committee hearing last week. Meanwhile, a state constitutional amendment aimed at making abortion a state right is being circulated for signatures, and abortion advocates hope it will be on the November 5 ballot.
