Supporters of a South Dakota abortion rights initiative submitted far more signatures than required Wednesday to make the ballot this fall. But its outcome is unclear in the conservative state, where Republican lawmakers strongly oppose the measure and a major abortion rights advocate doesn’t support it.

The effort echoes similar actions in seven other states where voters have approved abortion rights measures, including four — California, Michigan, Ohio and Vermont — that put abortion rights in their constitution. Abortion rights measures also might appear on several other state ballots this year.

The signatures were submitted on the same day the Arizona Legislature approved a repeal of a long-dormant ban on nearly all abortions, and as a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant, went into effect in Florida.

Dakotans for Health co-founder Rick Weiland said backers of the ballot initiative gathered more than 55,000 signatures to submit to Secretary of State Monae Johnson, easily exceeding the 35,017 valid signatures needed to make the November general election. Johnson’s office has until Aug. 13 to validate the constitutional initiative. A group opposing the measure said it’s already planning a legal challenge to the petition alleging the signatures weren’t gathered correctly.

South Dakota outlaws all abortions, except to save the life of the mother, under a trigger law that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

“The abortion law in South Dakota right now is the most restrictive law in the land. It’s practically identical to the 1864 abortion ban in Arizona,” said Weiland, referring to the law Arizona legislators voted to repeal Wednesday. “Women that get raped, victims of incest, women carrying nonviable or problem pregnancies have zero options.”

Weiland said the ballot measure is based on Roe v. Wade, which had established a nationwide right to abortion. It would bar the state from regulating “a pregnant woman’s abortion decision and its effectuation” in the first trimester, but allow second-trimester regulations “only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman,” such as licensing requirements for providers and facility requirements for safety and hygiene.

The initiative would allow the state to regulate or prohibit abortion in the third trimester, “except when abortion is necessary, in the medical judgment of the woman’s physician, to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman.”

“Our Roe framework allows for abortion in the first two trimesters,” Weiland said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota doesn’t support the measure.

“In particular, it does not have the strongest legal standard by which a court must evaluate restrictions on abortion, and thereby runs the risk of establishing a right to abortion in name only which could impede future efforts to ensure every South Dakotan has meaningful access to abortion without medically unnecessary restrictions,” executive director Libby Skarin said in a written statement.

Planned Parenthood North Central States, the former sole abortion provider in South Dakota, hasn’t said whether the organization would support the measure. In a joint statement with the ACLU of South Dakota, the two said groups said, “We are heartened by the enthusiasm South Dakotans have shown for securing abortion rights in our state.”

Weiland said he’s hopeful once the measure is on the ballot, “another conversation will occur with some of these organizations.” He cited his group’s hard work to get the measure this far, and said measure backers are “optimistic that we’re going to have the resources we need to be able to get the message out.”

Republican opponents, meanwhile, are promising to fight the initiative. Earlier this year, the GOP-led Legislature passed a resolution formally opposing it, along with a bill for a petition signature withdrawal process. The backer of the latter bill was Republican state Rep. Jon Hansen, a co-chair of Life Defense Fund, the group promising to challenge the ballot initiative.

Hansen called the measure extreme during a forum last month.

“If the proponents of this abortion amendment wanted to just legalize rape and incest exceptions, they could have done that, but they didn’t do that,” Hansen said at the time. “Instead, what they wrote is an amendment that legalizes abortion past the point of viability, past the point where the baby could just be born outside the womb and up until the point of birth.”

Hansen also asserted that the measure would not allow “basic health and safety standards for mothers” in the first trimester.

Weiland has repeatedly disputed Hansen’s claims, and called Life Defense Fund’s planned court challenge “just a desperate charge on their part.”

Mitt Romney says he resents being compared to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem after she bragged about killing a pet dog over its troublesome behavior.

The former Republican presidential standard-bearer insisted that he did nothing nearly so cruel as Noem by strapping a pet dog to the roof of his car, a much-mocked episode from his 2012 White House campaign.

“I didn’t shoot my dog,” Romney told HuffPost Tuesday. “I loved my dog, and my dog loved me.”

He called Noem’s story about shooting and killing the pooch “a tale of slaughter.”

Noem, a right-wing Republican hardliner who was once thought to be on former President Trump’s vice presidential short list, drew withering criticism from across the political spectrum with her bizarre account in a memoir that emerged last week.

Apparently hoping to burnish her tough lady image, Noem recounted a 20-year old episode in which she says she killed the dog named Cricket because it didn’t hunt properly and displayed other problematic behavior.

““I hated that dog,” wrote Noem, adding it was “less than worthless.” She also killed a goat that she derided as smelly and obnoxious.

Romney own doggie debacle came in 1983 when as a young father he packed up the family Chevrolet station wagon for a summer trip from Boston to the Canadian Atlantic seaboard.

With no room inside for the pet pointer, Seamus, Romney attached a dog carrier to the roof rack and created a makeshift shield to protect him from the elements.

The story was recounted by Romney’s son during his GOP presidential primary campaign as a way of humanizing the candidate who battles perceptions that he is wealthy and aloof.

But it backfired as political rivals pounced on the damaging claim that Romney strapped the pooch to the car’s roof.

BROOKINGS, S.D. — South Dakota State University’s new precision agriculture program has had success at persuading in-state and some other Midwestern farmers to use more technology in their operations, while other states lag in their adoption of it.

SDSU was the first university in the country to create a

program that teaches and helps farmers use precision ag

, the science of new technologies and traditional methods that make operations more efficient to increase crop yields while reducing environmental impacts. For example, the use of global positioning satellites helps target chemicals and fertilizers where they’re needed most.

Ali Mirzakhani Nafchi, an assistant professor at the precision ag center, said the school is working to increase usage through education and research to make the technology more practical for farmers.

“I am very, very optimistic it is going to work. And we will see the changes not only in South Dakota, in the nation and in the world,” he said.

South Dakota has one of the highest percentages of usage, with 53% of farmers using precision ag technology,

according to a study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Other Midwest states where more than half the farmers also use precision ag include North Dakota, Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska,

according to a study done by the SDSU Ness School of Management and Economics

.

Nationally, just 27% of farmers use precision ag practices to manage crops or livestock, the Ness study found.

The most widely adopted precision ag technologies include auto-steering in machinery and guidance or “georeferencing technology,” the process of taking digital images.

Satellite imagery is the next most widely adopted technology, with nearly 60% of farmers having used it, according to the Ness study.

The technology typically increases crop production by 4% and fertilizer placement efficiency by 7%, according to a study done by the

Association of Equipment Manufacturers

. Precision ag also reduces herbicide and pesticide, fossil fuel and water use.

Despite the benefits of optimizing returns and yields, factors such as cost and lack of general knowledge about precision ag have prevented most farmers from using the tech products as widely as originally hoped.

Anna Karels, a student at the precision ag center, said it takes money to get started but will save money in the long term.

“I think it’s hard for a lot of farmers to (understand) that, yes, it (might increase) my costs … upfront, but it pays off over a certain number of years,” she said.

Nafchi said lowering the initial rate will incentivize more farmers to use the technology.

“Initial costs for variable rate application is too high,” he said. “So imagine if we get help. Somehow maybe make it less inexpensive, or lower the initial costs, or just go and do an incentive, investment for them, and ask them to just try it. And then they see the return on their investment is really good. I’m very optimistic they will use it.”

If the initial costs are unattainable for some farmers, there are programs in place to help operations use this technology. USDA and the National Science Foundation have provided almost $200 million for precision ag research and developmental funding from 2017 to 2021,

according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office

.

Another factor for the low adoption rates is the lack of knowledge about the new technology. But there are options for South Dakota farmers to learn more.

“Dealerships like John Deere, I know they have a lot of clinics that they put on and stuff like that. (The school) does a lot of that to where they go out and show farmers, ‘OK, this is what this does and how it can help you and benefit you’ and kind of like go through and show them how to use it,” Karels said.

The

Raven Precision Agriculture Center

was built for students in the major to learn about precision ag in interactive ways.

The building features rooms full of equipment and precision ag products students use to learn through hands-on technology. The $46.2 million building opened in August 2021, making it the first precision ag program in the nation.

Kasiviswanathan Muthukumarappan

, endowed department head and professor at the center, said the department is proud of being the first but is now changing its curriculum to become the best program in the nation.

“We would like to grow our precision ag program to the next level, and elevate the experiences for our students,” he said.

One change is to add more specialized majors to collect more data on precision ag.

“Previously, we had one recipe for all the students who are enrolled in (the) precision ag program, meaning that we combine agronomy and technologies together and make it one robust program,” Muthukumarappan said. “Now, we are making it more user-friendly. And we have three different tracks. One is for technology track. The other one is for agronomy track. And the other one is for data track, electronic strikers.”

The program, with 66 students currently, is trying to raise enrollment rates by 20% in the next five years to make this goal attainable. SDSU’s mission is to simplify this technology and make it more practical for farmers, Nafchi said.

This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit news organization. Contact Greta Goede at greta.goede@sdnewswatch.org.