An anti-abortion group in South Dakota has filed a lawsuit to block an abortion rights measure on the November ballot.
In the complaint filed Thursday, the Life Defense Fund alleged several irregularities on the part of the measure’s supporters, as well as invalid signatures and fraud. The group seeks to disqualify or invalidate the initiative.
In May, Secretary of State Monae Johnson validated the measure by Dakotans for Health for the Nov. 5 general election ballot. Proponents of the measure I had sent around 54,000 signatures to qualify the electoral initiative. They needed about 35,000 signatures. Johnson’s office considered about 85% of the signatures valid, based on a random sample.
The Life Defense Fund alleged that Dakotans for Health failed to file a required affidavit for petition circulators’ residency and that petitioners did not always provide a required flyer to circulators and left petition sheets unattended. The Life Defense Fund also objected that many other signatures were considered invalid, and the alleged petitioners misled people about what they were signing.
“The public should closely scrutinize Dakotan for Health’s comments and carefully consider their credibility. Ultimately, the Court will determine whether such illegal conduct could result in the measure being placed on the ballot,” Life Defense Fund attorney Sara Frankenstein said in an email Monday.
Dakotans for Health called the Life Defense Fund lawsuit “a last-ditch effort to undermine the democratic process.”
“They have thrown everything they can, and now the kitchen sink, at stopping voters from weighing in in November. We are confident that the people of South Dakota will be able to make this decision, not the politicians, this November. ,” co-founder Rick Weiland said in a statement Friday.
The measure would prevent the state from regulating “a pregnant woman’s abortion decision and its implementation” in the first trimester, but would allow regulations in the second trimester “only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.”
The constitutional amendment would allow the State to regulate or prohibit abortion in the third trimester, “except when the abortion is necessary, in the woman’s medical judgment, to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman.”
South Dakota prohibits abortion as a serious crime except to save the mother’s life, under a trigger law that took effect in 2022 with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Dobbs ruling that overturned the constitutional right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.
Measure attracted opposition from Controlled by South Dakota Republicans Legislature earlier this year. The Legislature approved resolution officially opposed the measure and passed a law allowing petition signers withdraw your subscriptions of initiative petitions. The latter is not expected to affect the measure presented to voters.
The Life Defense Fund is also seeking to prohibit Dakotans for Health and its workers from sponsoring or circulating petitions or conducting ballot initiative committee work for four years.
South Dakota is one of four states — along with Colorado, Florida and Maryland — where measures to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution will be put before voters in November. There are petitions to add similar questions in seven more states.
Since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended national abortion rights two years ago, there have been seven abortion-related ballot measures at the state level, and abortion rights advocates have prevailed on all of them.
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Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota. Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this story from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
