RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) – With Roe v Wade being overturned at the federal level in 2022, the pro-choice community has been working to bring back those rights. At South Dakota’s state level, Dakotans For Health put together a petition with more than 55,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot.

Rick Weiland, Co-Founder of Dakotans for Health, believes these rights are important to protect women, living in a State that prides itself on freedom.

“We’ve spent millions of South Dakota tax dollars advertising what a free state we are. ‘come here and work in South Dakota, enjoy the freedom living in our state’, and then I look at the hypocrisy, and I think if you’re a woman and you’re raped and you’re pregnant, do you have freedom to make a choice of what to do? No, you’ve lost that,” Weiland said.

Travis Lasseter, executive Director of Black Hills Pregnancy Center, says no matter what happens with this initiative, their center will continue to answer all of their patient’s questions with medical facts, allowing women to make an informed decision.

Weiland says his group has faced backlash over potential late-term abortions. He went on to say the initiative is simply restoring women’s rights.

“I think this freedom amendment is so important to just restore the rights Women had for 50 years, we’re getting criticized for being too radical, that this goes way beyond Roe, which is just a bold-faced lie,” Weiland said.

Weiland says he is optimistic voters from both sides will bring women’s rights back to the most restrictive reproductive rights state of South Dakota.

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