South Dakota
The Catholic father-son duo fighting for abortion rights in South Dakota
This story is part of an investigative series and new documentary, The A-Word, by The Independent examining the state of abortion access and reproductive care in the US after the fall of Roe v Wade.
On May 2, 2022, Rick Weiland — longtime Democrat and former candidate for Congress — and his son Adam were driving home from South Dakota’s state capitol. The father-son duo had just successfully filed the required number of signatures to put Medicaid expansion on the ballot, when the Supreme Court’s draft of its forthcoming Dobbs decision leaked.
“We immediately started talking about it,” Adam, who left the private sector shortly after Donald Trump became president to join his father in politics, tells The Independent. “Then we got our attorney on the phone.”
Aware of the state’s trigger law that would automatically ban abortion if and when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the pair appreciated the gravity of the situation. But it wasn’t until two women — one Democrat, one Republican — urged them to do something about it that they realized what steps they personally needed to take.
“It was Kathy Pearsal, a longtime Democrat and trial lawyer, and Jan Nicoli, a Republican and former appropriations committee chair,” Adam explains. “Just a couple of badass women in their early 80s, late 70s — diehard reproductive rights warriors — who reached out to us and said that it was really important that something gets done.
“This is something that we both felt very strongly about anyway,” Adam continues, “but I have to give the credit to them for connecting the dots. We all got together, drafted the amendment, filed it and started collecting signatures.”
On June 24, 2022, Rick and Adam’s fear was realized — the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and abortion was automatically banned in South Dakota.
Thankfully, they were already preparing for the fight ahead.
A historic 10 states will have abortion-related measures on the ballot come November, giving voters the chance to expand or protect access to abortion care in their home states. Yet only one state with a near-total ban — South Dakota — is leaving the fate of abortion access up to its citizens.
In South Dakota, it is illegal to end a pregnancy from the moment of conception, with no exceptions for rape or incest. The post-Roe ban does allow for exceptions when the life of the pregnant person is in danger, but like other states with similar rules, the exception language is comically vague — doctors across South Dakota are now afraid to treat pregnant patients in dire situations for fear of prosecution.
OBGYNs are leaving the state. Pregnant patients are traveling to nearby Minnesota or beyond for routine prenatal care. Others are left to fend for themselves, without the financial resources to end an unwanted or potentially dangerous pregnancy in a state with a high preterm birth rate, a growing number of maternity care deserts, and six of America’s 15 counties with the highest child poverty rate.
South Dakota’s Ballot Measure G would change all that by restoring and enshrining Roe v Wade-era abortion protections in the state’s constitution.
To many outsiders looking at the political climate of South Dakota — where Republicans hold every statewide office and all but 11 of 105 seats in the state legislature — Rick and Adam Weiland’s efforts could seem ill-fated at best. But the lifelong politician and his son believe in the will of the people, and poll after poll shows that, regardless of party affiliation, South Dakotans overwhelmingly want access to abortion care.
“We still have the ability to drive some pretty incredible, progressive public policy,” Rick says. “My first foray into this space, when I was a candidate for the Senate, was helping with the effort to increase minimum wage.
“We got payday lender reform,” Rick continues. “We brought Medicaid expansion here — 52,000 people got health insurance who didn’t have it … People should not forget about these red states or write them off, because there are ways to change things. We are changing things in South Dakota.”
The two are also heartened by South Dakota’s history of utilizing ballot measures — it was the first state to include direct democracy in its constitution via a statewide initiative and referendum process. Allowing voters to decide on public policy is not a bug but a feature of the state’s political process.
“We’ve always been able to circumvent the special interests, bypass the legislature and put something on a ballot that lets the people decide yes or no,” Adam says. “‘Under God the people rule.’ That’s the South Dakota state motto.”
The father and son’s glass-half-full point of view — what Adam refers to as their “cockeyed Norwegian optimism” — does not blind them from the challenges ahead. Their grassroots organization, Dakotans for Health, is up against the powerful anti-abortion lobby, historically known for its harassment and bullying techniques as well as its bottomless pockets. Life Defense Fund, an anti-abortion organization, has sued them, arguing that the ballot measure is invalid and urging the court to rule that votes for the amendment should not be counted — a move that would defy the state’s history of citizen-originated ballot measures.
“It’s ridiculous,” Adam says. “The validity rate that we got from the secretary of state was one of the highest of any state ballot measure in 20 years. We had hundreds of people involved — a real grassroots effort by the people — and these guys, because they are terrified of a fair fight and are fixated on imposing their religious laws on the people of South Dakota, are essentially engaging in legal warfare.”
“They are looking for anything they can to deny the voters the right to decide,” Rick adds. “But we are confident that this will be voted on in November and that it will pass.”
The two are also guided by their faith — another perhaps surprising motivator for those who have bought into the anti-abortion narrative that suggests religious individuals do not obtain or believe in abortion access. (Many people who identify as religious have abortions — according to Guttmacher, 24 percent of abortion patients are Catholic, 17 percent are mainline Protestant, 13 percent are evangelical Protestant, and 8 percent identify with another religion.)
“We’re both raised Catholic. We’re both very motivated by social justice and social causes,” Adam explains. “So that is part of how we grew up — a lot of what we did as a family was work on social justice causes.”
Adam and a small group of volunteers spend most of their time in a nondescript building tucked behind a quaint Sioux Falls home, which serves as the Dakotans for Health headquarters. Among the stacked yard signs and bundled-up pamphlets, the group coordinates canvassing efforts and drums up donations that will help them reach as many would-be voters as possible before November.
“It’s a David and Goliath thing,” Adam says of their efforts. “We’re up against a powerful anti-abortion lobby with lots of money, who are not afraid to throw their weight around. It’s challenging in a small community, but anything that is worth doing isn’t going to be easy.”
When fatigue or despair threaten to set in, Adam says the very stakes he and his father talked about on that drive back from Pierre in 2022 bombard his mind — stakes that were made painfully clear when he visited South Dakota’s most rural areas while collecting signatures for Ballot Measure G.
“During the petition drive, people come up to you and talk to you about something terrible that has happened to them or someone they know,” he says. “Stories of being denied care, or going across state lines for miscarriage management. Stories of rape and incest. Those are very tragically real things here.
“The stories are everywhere, because this law is impacting everyone,” he adds.
In those moments, Adam says he tries not to dwell on what South Dakotans stand to lose — having been fighting in the political arena for much of his adult life, he knows that it could be 10, 20, even 30 years before another chance to restore and codify Roe v Wade into the state’s constitution is realized.
“People are being discriminated against because of who they are and where they live,” he says. “We are in a position to do something about it. We’re on the cusp of it. But yeah, it’s a little scary to think about… if we don’t succeed.”
Adam is particularly passionate about urging men to get involved in the ongoing efforts to expand and protect abortion efforts, not just in South Dakota but nationwide.
“Men need to wake the hell up,” he says. “Men must do a better job, because we’ve got something at stake here, too.
“Us being in this space, standing up and being visible in this space, is important,” he adds. “Perhaps we can inspire other men to be more vocal about it, because it makes a difference.”
South Dakota
Prevention groups fear consequences from Noem’s proposal to reduce funding for anti-tobacco efforts • South Dakota Searchlight
An anti-smoking group is warning of “devastating effects” if South Dakota lawmakers approve Gov. Kristi Noem’s proposal to reduce funding for a tobacco use prevention fund by more than half.
A bill backed by Noem’s administration would drop the Tobacco Prevention and Reduction Trust Fund’s annual allocation from $5 million to $2 million. Legislators will consider the bill during the annual legislative session that began Tuesday in Pierre.
The fund sustains the South Dakota Tobacco Control Program, aimed at preventing South Dakotans from using tobacco products and helping residents quit through the South Dakota QuitLine.
Much of the funding goes toward contractual services for QuitLine. The state currently holds a one-year, $824,000 contract with Avera Health to provide telephone and other tobacco counseling services for Quitline and a one-year, $1 million contract with Pierre-based Vilas LTC Pharmacy to provide medication for QuitLine participants. The state allocated nearly $400,000 toward grants and subsidies last fiscal year for other prevention and counseling initiatives, according to the Bureau of Finance and Management.
Ben Hanson, North and South Dakota government relations director for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, said the cut “robs” money that was “promised” and overwhelmingly supported by South Dakota voters in 2006, when they passed an initiated measure to increase the tax on tobacco products and create the fund.
“We think it’d have long-term pretty devastating effects on respiratory health and eventually youth smoking rates,” Hanson said.
The trust fund receives revenue from the tobacco tax on cigarette, cigar and chewing tobacco sales. State law currently requires that the first $30 million from the tax goes to the state’s general fund, the next $5 million goes to the trust fund, and any further revenue goes to the general fund. Noem’s bill would keep that formula but change the $5 million trust fund allocation to $2 million.
Noem’s proposal comes as the state faces a tight budget year due to lower-than-anticipated sales tax revenues. Tobacco tax revenues are also falling. Noem’s administration projects the state will collect about $42 million in tobacco taxes this fiscal year, its lowest amount since 2006.
The QuitLine and other funded prevention efforts extend to non-tobacco nicotine products that have grown in popularity, including e-cigarettes, vape pens and nicotine pouches. But the tax doesn’t include those products. The state Department of Revenue cannot track non-tobacco nicotine product sales, a spokesperson told South Dakota Searchlight in an email.
Between 2022 and 2023, the percentage of U.S. high school students reporting tobacco and nicotine product use — including e-cigarettes — declined from 16.5% to 12.6%, but the percentage among middle school students increased from 4.5% to 6.6%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In South Dakota, 14.7% of high schoolers reported using e-cigarettes last fiscal year, according to the Bureau of Finance and Management, which was three times higher than the percentage that reported smoking and seven times higher than the percentage that reported spit tobacco use.
The Carroll Institute in Sioux Falls received about $17,000 in funding last fiscal year from the Tobacco Prevention and Reduction Trust Fund to purchase prevention curriculum for elementary school students. About 85% of the Carroll Institute’s funding comes from state government, including grants from other sources than the trust fund, said Carroll Institute Executive Director Tiffany Butler.
A decade ago, the institute focused on alcohol. Now, it focuses on vaping education, said Kristi VanDeRostyne, prevention services program manager. She said some students vape in the school bathroom or even the classroom during the day, using devices that look like pens, water bottles or USB flash drives.
“I know our state and nation are all worried about fentanyl and meth. It’s everywhere,” VanDeRostyne said. “Where do you prevent that from happening? By building those prevention skills at a young age while you still have that captive audience.”
Instead of reducing contributions to the trust fund, Butler said she’d prefer to see the fund’s grants expanded to cover more costs, including reimbursing staff time.
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South Dakota
South Dakota's Grace Larkins limited as UND women's basketball dominates Coyotes in 80-54 win
GRAND FORKS — When UND women’s basketball starters Walker Demers, Jocelyn Schiller and Nevaeh Ferrara Horne left the floor with a minute and a half left to play against South Dakota, the crowd of 1,800 at the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center stood and cheered as the trio headed to the bench.
The fans watched the Fighting Hawks dominate South Dakota in an 80-54 win Wednesday night, UND’s largest win over the Coyotes since Jan. 15, 2005 – exactly 20 years ago – when the Hawks beat South Dakota 89-62 in Grand Forks.
“It’s obviously something that makes the Betty special,” UND coach Mallory Bernhard said. “We have a very loyal fan base. I feel like it’s our job to give them something to get on their feet about and get them excited. We’ve known for a long time that we have to get the wins, and we have to put a product on the floor that they’re proud to watch. Win or lose, just play our butts off, play hard, and play basketball the right way, and they’ll show up.
“I’m happy (the fans) got to see a night like tonight. I’m happy for our team, obviously, but we have some absolutely fantastic fans, and I hope they enjoyed tonight and keep coming out.”
UND led all 40 minutes of its 26-point win, its first over South Dakota since Feb. 4, 2023. The Hawks (8-10) have won two Summit League games over a four-day span, and are less than a week removed from a double-overtime loss to Oral Roberts.
“I think the fans are really starting to appreciate just what we’re doing out there,” Schiller said, “and I think the time we’re putting in behind the scenes is really helping, too. We’re shooting the ball better and less turnovers — taking care of the ball — so that definitely is helping.”
South Dakota, which has now won 15 of its last 17 games against UND, watched as the Hawks limited Coyotes star Grace Larkins to 14 points — her lowest total since scoring 12 at Wyoming on Dec. 15.
Larkins still ended with a double-double (13 rebounds) — her fifth-straight. But Larkins averaged 32.8 points, 11.6 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game over her last five games entering Wednesday’s matchup.
She dropped 45 points against Omaha on Saturday, earning her both AP national player of the week and Ann Meyers Drysdale national player of the week honors.
“Defensively, I really liked our intensity,” Bernhard said. “I thought we did a great job — Grace Larkins is obviously someone who can put up some pretty big numbers. I thought we did a really good job trying to contain her, especially off that flat screen, which we had a little bit of trouble with this last weekend. It felt like a team effort on both sides of the ball, and really loved the fight from our team.”
Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald
Demers, who transferred to UND this spring after two seasons at South Dakota, played her former team for the first time, putting up seven points and 13 rebounds.
“I got a lot of questions asked before the game, like, ‘Are you nervous?’” she said. “I was like, ‘Why would I be?’ I have an amazing team behind me, and I was excited more than anything. That (win) was just the best feeling.”
Mikayla Aumer led UND with 17 points, and Schiller added 14. Ferrara Horne had 12 points off 4-for-6 3-point shooting.
Fatima Ibrahim’s double-double (10 points, 13 rebounds) came off a 5-for-7 shooting night.
One month ago, on Dec. 17, UND hosted Mayville State. The Hawks trailed by three points at halftime before coming back to win.
Four days later, the Hawks traveled to Wyoming and scored just three points in the final quarter of a 73-41 loss.
But “something definitely clicked with our team,” after that game, Bernhard said. UND has gone 3-1 over the last four games, signaling a change of direction for a team that struggled in the first half.
“Everyone wants instant gratification,” Bernhard said. “That’s just not the reality, so it’s nice to have nights like tonight where they do get to see a little bit of the fruits of their labor. I really just love the mindset our team has right now. Our record maybe isn’t glamorous to a whole lot, but I don’t think they’re being dissuaded from putting in the work and continuing to fight to see if our team can get better.”
Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald
MILBANK, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley announced that one person had been arrested following a shooting that occurred at a Milbank nursing home on Wednesday.
Jackley told Dakota News Now that an employee dispute led to the shooting at Avantara Milbank where a supervisor was shot in the nose area and received minor injuries.
The suspect was arrested and there is no danger to the public at this time.
South Dakota DCI is leading the investigation and the suspect is in the process of being formally charged.
They are presumed innocent under the US Constitution.
Copyright 2025 Dakota News Now. All rights reserved.
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