MITCHELL, S.D. (Joshua Haiar, South Dakota Searchlight) – A proposed measure to reinstate abortion rights hasn’t made the ballot yet, but the debate is underway.

About 100 people converged Tuesday evening on Dakota Wesleyan University for a discussion sponsored by the university’s McGovern Center as part of its Courageous Conversation series.

The room was filled with attendees from both sides of the issue eager to dissect the measure, which seeks to secure abortion rights in South Dakota, reversing the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. When that happened, a trigger law that the South Dakota Legislature had adopted in 2005 immediately banned abortions in the state except when necessary to save the life of the mother.

The ballot measure would amend the state constitution to legalize all abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy. It would allow regulations on abortion during the second trimester, but only in ways that are “reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.” In the third trimester, it would allow regulations up to a ban on abortions, with exceptions for the life or health of the pregnant woman.

Rick Weiland, whose Dakotans for Health group is spearheading the measure, pointed to a 2022 poll that found 76% of registered South Dakota voters support allowing abortion in cases of rape and incest. Meanwhile, he said, the state’s current law has stripped women of the right to choose whether or not to carry “their rapist’s fertilized embryo to term.”

“And the Legislature refuses to address it,” Weiland said. “You can’t give a rapist’s embryo more rights than a woman who has been raped.”

State Rep. Jon Hansen, R-Dell Rapids, who also serves as vice president of South Dakota Right to Life and co-chair of Life Defense Fund, and attended the discussion via Zoom, said the amendment goes beyond rape and incest exceptions.

“Instead, what they wrote is an amendment that legalizes abortion past the point of viability, past the point where the baby can just be born outside the womb, and up until the point of birth,” Hansen said.

He highlighted the exception for the health of the mother in the third trimester, which he said could include mental distress.

Hansen added that the ballot measure would prohibit the state from implementing health and safety regulations on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy.

“It’s like the wild, wild west with this abortion amendment,” Hansen said.

OB-GYN Michael Krause, of Mitchell, said doctors would not use mental distress as a justification to perform abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy.

“That is totally false,” he said. “It is harder on that mother, it is not healthier.”

Patti Giebink, a Chamberlain-based OB-GYN and anti-abortion activist, said many women who receive abortions go on to regret them.

“Elective abortion is not health care,” she said. “Because pregnancy is not a disease.”

Sheryl Johnson, the state Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for U.S. House, said “people are confused” by the language in the state’s abortion ban. She said one of her daughters had a miscarriage a couple of weeks after Roe was overturned, but when she went to the hospital, “they allowed her to go home without receiving care.”

During the middle of the night, Johnson said, her son-in-law found her daughter collapsed on the bathroom floor, soaking from blood loss, and called an ambulance to take her back to the hospital.

“So as a mother, I am very angry about that, and yes, it may be that they’re just misinformed, but we’re going to have that. We’re going to have that misinformation,” Johnson said.

Giebink told South Dakota Searchlight the current state law is clear, that aborting an unviable pregnancy is legal, and that stories like Johnson’s are “fear-mongering.”

Weiland said the state’s current law is pushing women to pursue unsafe abortions outside of a medical setting. Hansen said the proposed amendment will perpetuate unregulated abortions.

Weiland told South Dakota Searchlight the proposed amendment already has plenty of signatures and will be on the November ballot. The petition needs 35,017 signatures from registered South Dakota voters by May 7. Meanwhile, the Legislature passed a law this past winter allowing petition signers to withdraw their signatures after the fact, and anti-abortion activists are conducting a coordinated signature-withdrawal effort.

In 2021, 93% of abortions occurred during the first trimester – that is, at or before 13 weeks of gestation, according to the CDC. An additional 6% occurred between 14 and 20 weeks, and about 1% were performed at 21 weeks or more.

 

DES MOINES, IA – Advocates for immigrants are pushing back on a bill signed by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in the last few days of the legislative session, modeled on a recent, controversial Texas law.

Senate File 2340 gives local law enforcement officers and judges the authority to deport undocumented immigrants.

Erica Johnson, executive director of the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, argued the bill is an overreach, and said Iowa law enforcement officers are not authorized to enforce it.

“This is a pretty clear intervention into federal territory,” Johnson pointed out. “U.S. immigration law is governed by federal law.”

Much like the author of the Texas bill, supporters in Iowa blame the Biden administration for failing to slow illegal immigration, so the state has decided to take matters into its own hands.

Johnson contended the bill and other anti-immigrant sentiment during the just-completed legislative session target the very people Iowa, with its dwindling population, will depend on for its future workforce.

“What we need is communities that are safe, where workers have access to dignified, safe workplaces,” Johnson emphasized. “The truth of what Iowa’s future could be depends on immigrants and immigrant workers in our state, and unfortunately, this law could take us back, away from that possible future. ”

Johnson added her organization will pursue legal ways to block the bill from taking effect in July.

 

PIERRE, S.D. (Makenzie Huber, South Dakota Searchlight) – South Dakota and Mississippi are the only states that have a full state sales tax rate on groceries, but that could change in November.

Circulators of a petition to repeal the state sales tax on groceries said they planned to turn in enough signatures Wednesday to the South Dakota Secretary of State’s Office to place the measure on the Nov. 5 ballot. The office must still verify that enough of the signatures are from registered South Dakota voters.

The ballot initiative would repeal the state sales tax on anything sold for human consumption, except alcoholic beverages and prepared food. It does not prohibit cities from taxing groceries. Currently, the state has a 4.2% sales and use tax, and cities can tack on an additional 2% tax.

The state sales tax rate was 4.5% before state legislators reduced it during the 2023 legislative session. Legislators included a sunset clause to make the tax reduction expire in 2027, in part out of caution in case voters approve the grocery tax repeal. The reduction in the sales tax rate was estimated to cost the state more than $100 million in annual revenue, and the grocery tax repeal would cost an estimated $124 million in annual revenue.

Republican Gov. Kristi Noem promised to repeal the state food sales tax during her reelection campaign in 2022 and backed an unsuccessful bill during the 2023 legislative session to eliminate the tax. But Noem pulled her support for the potential ballot question last year. The commissioner of the state Bureau of Finance and Management told South Dakota News Watch that the ballot measure would prevent the state from taxing tobacco and medical marijuana.

Other Republican leaders, such as Senate President Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck, have spoken out against the initiative, saying it — along with the 2023 tax cut still in effect — could lead to a budget “train wreck.” Most recently, Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken spoke out against the measure during his State of the City address, according to The Dakota Scout.

Polling by South Dakota News Watch and the Chiesman Center for Democracy in 2023 found 60.6% of surveyed registered voters support eliminating the state sales tax on groceries.

TakeItBack, the organization spearheading the ballot initiative campaign, said it collected over 25,000 petition signatures from registered voters. Just over 17,500 are required to put the initiative on the ballot.

Rick Weiland, a Democrat, is co-founder of TakeItBack and also leads Dakotans for Health, which was the organization leading the petition circulation effort alongside a petition to restore abortion rights (the abortion-rights petition has not yet been submitted).

“Removing the state’s sales tax on groceries is a crucial step towards addressing food insecurity and promoting economic fairness in our state,” Weiland said in a news release.

The South Dakota State Federation of Labor AFL-CIO endorsed the ballot initiative Wednesday. The organization represents 195 unions in the state and 7,000 union members.

“Our low-income working families are struggling, with some spending up to 30% of their household income to feed their families,” said B.J. Motley, the organization’s president. “This inequality is unacceptable, and we stand ready to partner with TakeItBack to address this pressing issue.”

All ballot-question petitions must be filed by May 7. Several other citizen-initiated petitions are circulating, including a measure to switch the state from political-party primary elections to open primaries. The Legislature has already exercised its right to place two measures on the ballot: one would replace references to male officeholders in the state constitution with neutral language, and the other would ask voters to lift a prohibition against work requirements for Medicaid expansion enrollees.

 

OMAHA, NE – Nebraska nursing homes believe new federal minimum staffing requirements designed to ensure quality care may seal the fate of many smaller rural facilities.

On Monday, the White House announced it would finalize rules that all nursing homes that receive Medicare or Medicaid funds have to follow. It includes one that requires a registered nurse to be on site 24-7.

Under the new standards, Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing homes must provide their residents with at least 3.48 hours of nursing care a day, some of which have to be from a registered nurse.

On the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services webpage, the Biden-Harris Administration said requiring “sufficient staff” will provide the “safe and high-quality care residents deserve.”

Nebraska Health Care Association President and CEO Jalene Carpenter  said the new standards are unrealistic and come with no federal dollars.

“If this rule goes into effect, I can tell you access to care, particularly in the rural parts of our state will go away. We do not have the workforce to be able to sustain this mandate,” end quote.

U.S. Senator Deb Fischer blasted the Administration in a statement saying they have  abandoned rural America again “leaving working families and small businesses in the dust.”

Fischer said quote– “This misguided rule will devastate nursing homes across this country and worsen the staffing shortages we are already facing.”

In December, Fischer introduced legislation to block the implementation of the rule.

There is a three-year and five-year phase in the process for the standards.

According to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services webpage, the federal government is also working on temporary hardship exemptions for facilities with workforce shortages if they can meet certain criteria for geographic staffing availability and show good faith efforts to hire