South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced her administration will ban appointments with abortion providers who prescribe pills over the internet following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last week.
In an interview on Sunday morning, the Republican governor told
CBS News that she introduced a bill to ban telemedicine appointments in a bid from barring women from obtaining prescription abortion pills through the mail and online. South Dakota on Friday enacted a trigger law that bans most abortions—making the procedure a felony—after Roe v. Wade was scrapped.
“These are very dangerous medical procedures,” Noem told the outlet. “We don’t believe it should be available because it is a dangerous situation for an individual without being medically supervised by a physician.”
Noem, in her interview, echoed a line in Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion, saying the Constitution “does not give women the right to an abortion” and that the “power to make these decisions really goes to each individual state.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
has approved abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol, suggesting that there may be a legal fight between Republican-led states and the federal government under President Joe Biden over the medication.
“I think it’s important that this country recognizes that every single life is precious. The decision that we had this week was one that passes now this authority down to the states where elected officials will make those decisions in South Dakota,” Noem told
Fox News on Sunday. “We had a trigger law in place already. So as of today, abortions are illegal in our state, and they’re only allowed to save the life of the mother.”
Noem also said Sunday that her state will not prosecute women who attempt to get abortions.
“We’ll continue to have those debates on how we can support these mothers and what it means to really make sure we are not prosecuting mothers ever in a situation like this,” she told CBS News. “It will always be focused toward those doctors who knowingly break the law to perform abortions in our state.”
Other States
Other than South Dakota, as many as
two dozen other states have or could enact bans on abortion following the court’s decision. Kentucky and Louisiana had similar trigger bans already in place before the ruling, meaning that the new laws went into effect right after the Roe v. Wade reversal.
Right after the order was handed down on Friday, Missouri
enacted its trigger law prohibiting abortions except those necessary due to medical emergencies.
Utah’s trigger ban on the procedure went into effect Friday, according to a notice sent by John Fellows, the general counsel for the Utah legislature.
And Oklahoma, which has laws that ban most abortions already, took the step of enacting its ban, according to the state attorney general’s office. Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge similarly said that the state’s trigger ban took effect, announced Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
States such as Wisconsin and West Virginia have had abortion restrictions intact before the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that were never removed.
Wyoming, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Idaho also have abortion-related trigger laws and are expected to issue bans on the procedure in the coming days and weeks. In all, 13 states have trigger bans,
according to the Guttmacher Institute.
A number of mostly Democrat-led states like California and New York, meanwhile, will still allow abortions to take place. One of the Supreme Court ruling’s primary arguments, written by Alito, was that states and legislatures—not courts—should decide on whether to pass laws banning or allowing abortion, respectively.
