Judge Blocks South Dakota Abortion Law, Says It ‘Degrades’ Women
Here’s a rare spot of good news in the state-by-state abortion battle: A U.S. district court judge has temporarily blocked South Dakota’s new abortion law, which would have gone into effect today with a 72-hour waiting period and a forced visit to a crisis pregnancy center.
The three-day waiting period would have been the longest in the nation, and although some states keep trying to outdo each other on the anti-choice front, making women visit “counselors” whose goal it is to talk them out of abortions was also a new low. Chief Judge Karen Schreier (a Clinton appointee) agreed with Planned Parenthood and the ACLU that the law put an undue burden on women seeking abortions, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and found that the law violated women’s free speech rights by forcing them to discuss their decision with a non-medical third party — and a religious one at that.
