Thousands of people marched in hundreds of locations across the nation on October 2nd, including outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. In December justices will hear arguments about the constitutionality of a Missouri law that all but bans abortions in that state. Abortion opponents are hoping the resulting opinion will overturn decades of established law.
Marchers gathered in Rapid City’s Memorial Park to show their support for abortion rights, and Victoria Wicks talked with one of the speakers, a physician who has been a long-time vocal activist.
Marvin Buehner is a Rapid City OB-GYN in practice since 1990. He says he became involved with abortion rights when hospital policy prevented him from inducing labor for a patient carrying a fetus with a fatal condition.
He’s encouraged by South Dakota’s voters, who overturned a 2005 law banning abortion and two years later voted down an initiative banning most abortions. But he says abortion rights are still at risk.
"So now we’re left with a SD legislature that seems intent on chipping away at access by making it harder and harder with long consent periods, mandatory ultrasounds, provider restrictions, all kinds of things to just make it more and more difficult.”
Buehner says the rate of abortion in South Dakota has dropped significantly over the years. He says that decrease could result from a number of factors: patients going out of state for the procedure, patients forgoing abortion altogether, or contraception becoming more available through the Affordable Care Act.
He says he was baffled when he discovered that antiabortion activists often also oppose contraception.
“You know, and I thought, if the antiabortion folks and the prochoice folks could get together on anything, it would be about contraception. That just seemed logical to me. But then it … it’s pretty clear now that it’s not really about… it’s about subjugation and control of women and it always has been. And with that in mind, then it makes it easier to see where the opposition is and what strategies need to be done to overcome that.”
The national marches were held specifically in response to a recent Texas law, but antiabortion legislation is under judicial scrutiny in other states as well. In South Dakota the state is challenging an injunction on a remnant of a 2011 law. That case is in the beginning stages before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
