USA: South Dakota abortion ban on hold

A petition drive against the new abortion ban has prevented the law from coming into force until November. 

The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, a coalition of groups against the ban, collected 38,000 signatures by 19 June - more than twice the number needed to stop the law coming into force on 1 July. Voters will now decide whether the law should be brought into force or rejected when the question is added to ballot papers in an election scheduled for 7 November 2006.

The controversial law is one of the toughest in the USA and was signed into law by Republican Governor Mike Rounds in March. The law bans all abortions - including in cases of rape or incest - unless the mother’s life is at risk. Under it, doctors could get up to five years in prison and a $5,000 (£2,800) fine for performing an illegal abortion.

‘It’s no slam dunk. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,’ Jan Nicolay, who led the petition drive, told the Associated Press. ‘We’ll give it all we’ve got, I can tell you that.’

If voters back the law, opponents have promised a court challenge. It is considered likely that a federal judge would suspend the ban if it was challenged in court. The law would therefore not take effect unless South Dakota state got the case to the US Supreme Court and won.

New S Dakota abortion ban on hold, BBC News, 19 June 2006

Also read: USA: Petition drive to overturn South Dakota ban, 24 March 2006