PIERRE — According to the Right to Life lobbyist, in the past 49 years the South Dakota Legislature has approved 60 bills and resolutions protecting the lives of the unborn. Wednesday, a pro-life bill was defeated by the House State Affairs Committee.
HB1225 would keep the state from spending any funding on “convenience” abortions. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Julie Frye-Mueller, R-Rapid City, said a convenience abortion was any abortion performed not to save the life of the mother or due to incest or rape.
“This bill does not take a position on whether life begins at conception or abortion is murder,” Frye-Mueller said. “This bill makes clear that this state favors life.”
Frye-Mueller said that secular humanism has been established as a religion and that one of the precepts of that religion are that life does not begin at conception. By funding abortions, the state would be promoting a religion and running afoul of the First Amendment, she said.
Christopher Sevier, a former military lawyer from Birmingham, Alabama, told the committee that if it were to pass HB1225, the federal government would follow suit.
“We’re going to get every aspect of the federal government out of the abortion funding business,” said Sevier, who testified by telephone.
It doesn’t matter, Sevier said, that the state has laws on the books about abortion funding.
“It provides the correct and honest federal and state constitutional basis for why the state must never, ever get into the abortion funding business,” Sevier said of HB1225.
Sevier’s arguments for the bill seemed to form a repetitive pattern that got the best of the committee’s chairman, Rep. Lee Qualm, R-Platte. Qualm cut off Sevier twice, once during his testimony and again while he was offering rebuttal to opponent testimony.
Opposing the bill was Dale Bartscher, representing South Dakota Right to Life.
“Simply because a bill calls itself ‘pro-life’ does not mean that it is well-written,” Bartscher said, noting that South Dakota already has laws forbidding the state funding of abortion. “HB1225 is totally unnecessary.”
Dianna Miller, representing the South Dakota Network Against Family Violence and Sexual Assault, said a portion of the bill that would outlaw federal grants that pass through the state would put domestic abuse shelters out of business.
“We will lose that funding,” Miller said.
A veteran lobbyist, Miller said she was mystified by some portions of the bill. “I can’t even understand parts of it,” Miller said.
The committee tabled the bill on a vote of 10-3.
