Unease over abortion ban runs deep

The yard signs seem to be everywhere in South Dakota, declaring in pink and blue: “Vote Yes for Life.” They dot the lawns of churches and auto body shops, warehouses, grocery stores and parochial schools, isolated farmhouses and suburban bungalows.

Leslee Unruh, who’s promoting a ballot measure to ban virtually all abortions in South Dakota, says she’s distributed 42,000 signs. That’s one for every 12 registered voters.

But though she points to the signs as evidence of broad grass-roots support, polls and interviews with voters in several towns reveal a deep uneasiness with the ban, which would criminalize abortions at every stage of pregnancy and in every circumstance except if necessary to prevent the woman’s death.

Women would not be prosecuted for terminating a pregnancy, but anyone who helped could be charged with a felony, punishable by five years in prison.

A poll released last week by KELO-TV in Sioux Falls found that 50% of likely voters opposed the ban and 41% supported it, with the rest undecided. A survey at the end of October, sponsored by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper, had nearly identical results.

“It appears to me as though South Dakotans are pretty much where the rest of the country is: We don’t like abortion, but we don’t think it should be banned completely,” said Don Dahlin, a political science professor at the University of South Dakota.

On a blustery night last week, Marie Arneson stood in her doorway in this isolated town of 13,000 pondering that very issue. Her church supports the ban, “and I’ve listened to that,” said Arneson, 60. “But there are other things to be considered as well. We want to know if there are any openings for people who are rape and incest victims.”

Her face was troubled as she sorted through her conflicting emotions. She had a stack of articles about the ban on the kitchen table; she and her husband planned to read them all. Arneson couldn’t say yet what she’d decide when she stepped into the voting booth.

The ban was approved overwhelmingly by the Legislature in February. When Gov. Mike Rounds signed it into law, he described it as a direct challenge to Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion. The ban’s supporters hoped that Planned Parenthood would sue -- and that the lawsuit would be a vehicle for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe.

Instead, abortion-rights advocates made use of a provision in South Dakota that permits state laws to be referred to the ballot for a popular vote. They easily collected enough signatures to force that referral.

A “yes” vote on Tuesday would uphold the ban. A “no” vote would repeal it.

(Even if the ban is upheld, it will not immediately stop abortions in South Dakota. Planned Parenthood has vowed to sue within days if the measure passes; the group would probably obtain an injunction to stop the ban from taking effect while the case worked its way through the courts.)

The hard-fought and sometimes nasty campaign has cost about $4 million -- with roughly half of that spent by each side.

The group campaigning to keep the ban boasts that 65% of its money has come from state residents -- another sign, Unruh said, that South Dakotans are behind her. But the in-state total includes $750,000 from a corporation set up just weeks ago by a state legislator who opposes abortion. It is unclear what the corporation does, or where it came by the money for the donation.

GOP state Rep. Roger Hunt, who is listed as the corporation’s director, declined to answer questions.

The group working to repeal the ban, South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, has raised less than 9% of its money from state residents; most has come from abortion-rights supporters across the country, including Planned Parenthood affiliates. But the group has strong volunteer support; it’s turning out 2,000 South Dakotans to canvass door to door over the weekend.

“We’re telling people: You need to stand up and say, ‘It’s not the government’s business to tell women what they should do,’ ” said Jan Nicolay, a former Republican state legislator working to repeal the ban.

Antiabortion activists are hoping to tug at voters’ emotions in the final days of the campaign.

Unruh crashed her opponents’ final rally, theatrically releasing 814 pink and blue balloons in memory of the pregnancies terminated last year at the state’s lone abortion clinic. She recruited 20 women who have had abortions to work the phone bank; they share their remorse and tell voters a ban would have spared them much pain.

In TV and radio ads and mailers, Unruh has tried to ease voter concerns about the ban’s broad reach by assuring them that rape and incest victims -- and, indeed, all women -- could still use the morning-after pill, which can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of sex. Under South Dakota law, however, pharmacists are not required to dispense the pill, and emergency rooms are not required to offer it to victims of sexual assault.

“So far, proponents of the law have not succeeded in making the case that there are adequate exceptions,” Dahlin said.

Edna Cotton, a retiree in the farm town of Beresford, exemplifies the misgivings of South Dakotans.

In principle, Cotton, 78, wants to outlaw abortion. “I go by most of the things in the Bible,” she said.

But she is not sure she can support the strictest ban in the nation, one without an exception even for a young incest victim. “I haven’t decided,” she said. “I keep changing my mind.”

stephanie.simon@latimes.com