South Dakota Abortion Doctors Fear for Their Safety
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota – The only abortion clinic in South Dakota has four doctors on its staff and all live a cloak and dagger existence.
Mindful of the threat to their lives, and the precedent of other doctors killed by “pro-life” zealots, each flies in once a month to perform up to 30 operations and leaves the same day.
Abortion is dividing opinion across America again, nowhere more so than in the heartland where the Bible and the right to bear arms are held in equal reverence.
From the frozen farmlands of the north to the sultry deep south, states are fighting to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.
South Dakota has banned abortion for all pregnancies, including those resulting from incest and rape, unless the mother’s health is at risk. Mississippi is in the process of outlawing the practice and four other states are expected to follow.
South Dakota’s governor, Mike Rounds, is said to be in favor of signing his state’s bill into law next week.
“Pro-life” campaigners hope that, with the election to the Supreme Court of the conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, its 1973 Roe v Wade ruling can be reviewed – and even reversed.
“I don’t feel my life is in danger but I don’t tell casual acquaintances what I do,” the doctor in the Sioux Falls clinic said.
“If abortion is banned, you’ll end up with some very severely injured women,” she said, reluctant to disclose more about herself than that she had carried out abortions for 24 years.
“Back-street abortions end up with hysterectomies or heavy bleeding and obviously they can die,” she said.
Every week pro-life protesters surround the Planned Parenthood clinic, bristling with cameras, on the edge of Sioux Falls.
“They shout, ‘Sarah, you’re a Nazi,'” Sarah Stoesz, the president of Planned Parenthood, which operates clinics across America, said.
“At the parking lot, they shout, ‘How many babies did you kill to get that car?'”
The roads are dotted with posters saying “ABC: Abstinence Breeds Control” and “Abortion – One dead: Two wounded,” next to a silhouette of a grieving couple and a child’s grave on a hilltop.
