The South Dakota Supreme Court has overturned a judge’s ruling ruling last month, which dismissed a lawsuit that sought to abortion rights initiative of the November vote.
The court on Friday reversed the dismissal order and sent the case back for further proceedings. The anti-abortion group Life Defense Fund had appealed to The ruling by Judge John Pekas who dismissed the lawsuit seeking to invalidate the measure. The group so called numerous abuses involving petition distributors.
Leslee Unruh, co-chair of the Life Defense Fund, said in a statement that the group is pleased the court expedited the case and sent it back to the lower court.
“(Measure Leader) Rick Weiland and his paid gang broke laws, duped South Dakotans into signing their abortion petitions, left petitions unattended, and more. Dakotans for Health illegally collected signatures to get Amendment G on the ballot, which is why this measure should not be on the ballot in November,” she said.
The Associated Press emailed a request for comment to Dakotans for Health, the group that filed the measure. submitted approximately 54,000 petition signatures in May. Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s office later validated the measure for the vote.
The measure would prohibit the state from regulating “a pregnant woman’s decision to have an abortion and the performance thereof” in the first trimester, but would allow regulation in the second trimester only “in ways 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 abortion is necessary, in the medical judgment of the woman’s physician, to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman.”
south dakota declared outlaws abortion as a crime, except in cases where it is intended to save the mother’s life, under a trigger law that came into effect in 2022 after the US Supreme Court overthrown the constitutional right to abortion.
Abortion rights advocates have won on all seven abortion questions on statewide ballots since the Dobbs ruling. Voters in several other states will also give their opinion later this year.
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Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota.