Nov. 4 brought a major victory to the working class of South Dakota. For the second time in two years, voters defeated an abortion ban by 55 percent to 45 percent.
Out of 66 counties, three counties that voted for the ban in 2006 voted against it in 2008. Forty-two counties voted against the ban both times. The bourgeois forces that put abortion on the ballot claimed that as long as there were exceptions for rape and women’s health, the ban would pass. The voters rejected this by voting “no” to the government telling women what they could and could not do with their bodies.
However, this victory is not enough. South Dakota still has the strictest laws in the country when it comes to the right to choose. There is a mandatory 24-hour waiting period, and a doctor must perform a sonogram and inform the woman that, by having an abortion, she is terminating a life. The struggle to overturn these backward laws must continue.
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