Editor’s Note: The following is a Forum piece originally published by the Rapid City Journal. It was written by Elizabeth Kraus, a Republican state lawmaker who represents Rapid City’s District 33. She captured not only my attention but my thoughts and feelings so eloquently and completely that I was compelled to offer it here.
Thank you, Elizabeth, for your service and for your consistent support the rights of all God’s children.
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Caylee Anthony’s face haunts us and cries out for justice. The only difference between little Caylee and the 1.3 million babies aborted in the U.S. each year is a few months of nutrition and safety supplied by her mother’s womb.
The aborted babies, too, were inconvenient.
The decision to end her baby’s life haunts many women and girls who have been duped into believing that this surgical procedure must be safe since it is legal. The truth is that our culture has lied about the long-lasting effects of abortion on the mother and about the fact that the aborted “tissue” is indeed a baby.
Several letters to the editor have been misleading and incorrect regarding the informed consent law (HB1217) passed by the South Dakota Legislature and signed into law by our governor. For example, a recent letter to the editor incorrectly stated that we “allowed a minority to impose its religious views.”
The law passed the House 49-19 and passed the Senate 21-13. A majority of the Legislature and the governor had just been elected as outspoken pro-life candidates; a combined vote of 70-32 is a convincing majority.
Planned Parenthood has sued the state of South Dakota over this law enacted by our duly elected representative government.
Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit, not the state legislature or governor, will cost the state taxpayer to defend the law.
Despite Planned Parenthood’s blame, the South Dakota Pro-Life Litigation Sub Fund has been established, and dollars are accumulating to defend our informed consent law.
If you support the effort to defend our law from Planned Parenthood’s suit, send any amount to Life Protection Fund, c/o Office of the Governor, 501 E. Capitol Ave., Pierre, SD 57501.
The South Dakota State Medical Association has established Standards of Practice of Medicine that include a personal relationship between the patient/ physician and stringent informed consent requirements before an elective surgical procedure.
When a woman arrives at the Sioux Falls Planned Parenthood abortion facility, she pays a clerk approximately $500 in cash and signs for consent to the abortion, as a precondition to seeing a “patient educator.”
Planned Parenthood’s “patient educators” admitted (Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, et al) that they were not competent to counsel women about fetal development, assessment of coercion, or risk factors for depression and suicide.
The doctor, flown in from Minnesota, sees the pregnant mother only during the five to nine minutes required for surgery.
Our state laws require a 3-day wait to buy a home; the decision regarding termination of the mother/child relationship deserves at least as much protection and deliberation.
The South Dakota Informed Consent Law requires a consultation with the fully trained staff of a Pregnancy Care Center to provide the face to face relationship and informed consent necessary for the woman faced with a crisis pregnancy. The mother’s decision must be voluntary, uncoerced and informed.
Our South Dakota informed consent law merely brings the practice of elective abortion surgery closer to compliance with the South Dakota State Medical Association’s accepted sound principles of practice.
