By October, Spearfish resident Angela Anderson grew increasingly frustrated. Weeks away from the November election, she wanted to explain the abortion rights initiative. So, she bought ads in the Spearfish and Belle Fourche newspapers.
“I couldn’t take it anymore," Anderson said. "I didn’t know how to fight the false information anymore.”
She paid for the ad with her own money. Anderson is one of several Black Hills residents who organized around abortion rights. She says Dakotans for Health—the group that brought the initiative—felt like an East River organization.
“And they didn’t have the money to pay for coordinators," Anderson added. "So we organized—really, West River, on our own. Very grassroots-y.”
Rapid City resident Annie Dunckel said there was a large effort for the signature drive.
“And there was so much organization around it we’re like, ‘Okay, cool, there’s going to be signs and advertisements and they’re going to be reaching out to volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls,'" Dunckel said. "None of it happened. It was just—from my side—it was silent as a volunteer.”
On election night, the abortion rights constitutional amendment failed—59 to 41 percent.
Leslie Unruh, co-chair of Life Defense Fund, the anti-abortion group formed to against Amendment G, describes how their group organized.
“Sixty-six counties, 66 captains, 66 co-captains and a whole lot of volunteers. Where one county, something would happen, somebody else would step in and cover that," Unruh said. "There was a death in one—somebody stepped up and helped in there," Unruh said. "They just kept coming and coming. I didn’t even know most of them. We got to meet all these new people, new friends across the state.”
For months, Life Defense Fund said Constitutional Amendment G was too extreme. Two groups against the measure out fundraised and outspent the group backing the measure.
The day after the election, Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser lauded the results and called South Dakota a “beacon for how the pro-life movement can win future ballot measure fights.”
It wasn’t long ago that some described South Dakota as the "epicenter of the abortion rights movement" in the United States. Twice before, voters rejected near total abortion bans, both in 2006 and 2008. Those bans were aimed at Roe V. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion.
The coalition South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families formed against the near total bans. It included Planned Parenthood, the South Dakota State Medical Association and American College of Gynecologists, as well as other reproductive rights and democracy groups.
Michelle Trupiano was the campaign director in 2008. Now, Trupiano is the executive director of Missouri Family Health Council, which was one of more than 150 supporting organizations backing a successful effort to end Missouri’s abortion ban.
She said the 2008 campaign effort came down to money and traditional coalition building.
“Which is meeting with people, attending different organizations efforts and talking about how people could get involved in terms of what was at stake and how their efforts could support what was at stake," Trupiano said.
Trupiano said the 2008 campaign had around 25 staff members across the state—canvassers and field organizers—both in Sioux Falls and Rapid City. OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign spending, says the group spent $3.2 million on their campaign.
This year, Dakotans For Health raised just over $300,000 before a last-minute infusion of nearly $800,000 from a political group backed by Illinois’ Democratic Governor JB Pritzker.
Rick Weiland, president of Dakotans For Health, said by then Amendment G was already defined by the opposition. The measure also did not have the support of regional Planned Parenthood and ACLU groups.
So, he said, they created several groups they dubbed 'The Freedom Coalition.'
“We were fighting the right trying to defend this middle approach and not having the resources from groups like ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Center for Reproductive Rights—a lot of the national orgs that could have been helpful chose not to be because we didn’t go far enough.”
ACLU South Dakota officials say they were not meaningfully consulted on the ballot question language.
Weiland said Dakotans For Health used the last-minute infusion of cash on television and streaming advertisements, but says they needed more money earlier. Now, he said he’s waiting to see if anti-abortion groups and the Republican controlled legislature change the state's abortion law before deciding what comes next.
