Today's Washington Post has a story about the difficulty of obtaining an abortion in South Dakota's one abortion clinic. Yeah, South Dakota looks a lot like Mississippi. Moral of the story? Women should leave the friggin' state.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- The waiting room at the Planned Parenthood clinic was packed by the time the doctor arrived -- an hour late because of weather delays in Minneapolis.
It was clinic day, the one day a week when the only facility in South Dakota that provides abortions could take in patients. This time it was a Wednesday. The week before it was a Monday.
The day changes depending on the schedules of four doctors from Minnesota who fly here on a rotating basis to perform abortions, something no doctor in South Dakota will do. . .
One of three states in the country to have only one abortion provider -- North Dakota and Mississippi are the others -- South Dakota, largely because of a strong antiabortion lobby, is also becoming a leading national laboratory for testing the limits of state laws restricting abortion, both opponents and advocates of abortion rights say.
Each week, 15 to 20 or so women from across South Dakota find their way to the Sioux Falls Planned Parenthood for an abortion, no easy feat for many of them. South Dakota is home to some of the poorest counties in the country, including the poorest, Buffalo County, seat of the Crow Creek Sioux reservation. State law forbids any public funding for the $450 procedure, even in the case of rape or incest. Beyond cost, there is the distance. It's a long slog here from places like Rapid City, about 350 miles away in the western part of the state. For some women, the only way to do it -- and not pay for a hotel room -- is to make the 700-mile trip in one day.
"I figured I could get the abortion in Rapid City," said the woman, who has a 2-year-old daughter. "And I didn't know it would be so expensive. We had to borrow the money to get here."
The woman was 45 days pregnant, she said, the day she drove 350 miles to take the RU-486 abortion pill and then drive back. "I have to get back home to my daughter," said the woman, who said she was working full time and attending college part time to become a medical administrator. (She and the others interviewed did not want their names in the newspaper.) The woman said she had decided on abortion because "I can't afford another child, and I need to finish school and work to support the one I got." She receives $50 a month in child support and less than $200 a month in food stamps but was deemed ineligible for any further public assistance because of her full-time job.
Another patient, a 29-year-old teacher who became pregnant while using birth control with her boyfriend of a few months, who is also a teacher, said she was not ready for a child and neither was he.
"I'm pro-choice all the way," said the woman, who is from a town about 90 miles from Sioux Falls. She found out she was pregnant at seven weeks and had to wait two weeks for the abortion because the clinic's schedule conflicted with her work schedule.
When the Planned Parenthood clinic was built six years ago, architects factored in the hostility that clinics faced. It has no windows in the front of the building, so abortion protesters cannot look in, and the parking lot is in the back, on private property safe from picketers. The glass in the encased reception area is bulletproof. Doors are kept locked, and visitors must present identification to be buzzed inside.
Reproductive Rights Feminism Pro Choice Roe Politics Abortion Patriarchy
