Abortion rights battle expected during 2022 South Dakota legislative session

Abortion is likely to be a major topic during the 2022 South Dakota legislative session that begins on Jan. 11, as opponents of the medical procedure see an opportunity to capitalize on recent legal cases across the country that further restricted access to abortion.

The anticipated legislation seeking to restrict abortion rights will come as the future of legal abortion in the U.S. is suddenly uncertain, and as a recent poll by South Dakota News Watch shows that three-quarters of registered voters in the state want abortion to remain legal, and that a solid majority of voters do not support increasing restrictions on the procedure.

For several years, Republican-dominated legislatures in South Dakota have considered and sometimes passed laws that make abortions harder to get, often by requiring more steps to be taken by pregnant women who want to terminate a pregnancy. Many of those laws were incremental in nature and were designed to restrict access to abortion without directly violating the 1973 Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal across the country.

But the anti-abortion movement in the U.S. saw renewed momentum on several fronts in 2021 that have set the stage for pro-life lawmakers in states like South Dakota to potentially push more aggressive legal steps to restrict access to abortion or even, as pro-choice advocates worry, make abortions essentially impossible to obtain.

Read more: https://www.sdnewswatch.org/stories/abortion-battle-expected-to-be-fought-during-2022-south-dakota-legislative-session/