Yesterday, South Dakotan Secretary of State Chris Nelson said that organizers had collected enough signatures to put the sweeping abortion ban on the ballot in November.
The state's abortion law, among the strictest in the nation, bans the procedure in all cases except when necessary to save a woman's life, with no exceptions for rape or incest.Supporters hoped it would prompt a court challenge that would give the U.S. Supreme Court an opportunity to overturn its 1973 Roe. v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
I’m simultaneously excited and terrified. Obviously collecting all those signatures (almost twice the amount needed) is truly amazing, but there’s still a lot of work to be done before November. To see how you can help, go to the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families.
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Is it even necessary? The lower courts should strike it down ASAP.
I guess I'm just afraid that if the people support the ban (and they might), the Supreme Court might take these challenges more seriously rather than seeing them as blatant election-day politics.
Yes, the lower courts should strike it down, but the losers can appeal as long as there's a court that's willing to hear it.
I don't know the makeup of any of these lower courts, but I'd imagine that as South Dakota is a conservative state, their state supreme court would be of a similar political persuasion, and once you get up to higher courts, well, they're full of judges assigned by Bush---without the fight that liberals put into protecting the Supreme Court.