In another blow to women’s rights, the Republican governor of South Dakota Dennis Daugaard today signed legislation intended to curtail women’s access to reproductive healthcare and bolster anti-choice propaganda. The law creates a 72 hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion in the state, which has only one clinic which offers abortion services just once a week. Moreover, women seeking to terminate their pregnancy would be required to meet with staff of a “pregnancy help center,” more commonly known as crisis pregnancy centers, which do not provide abortion services.
People For the American Way’s report, “The GOP Takes Its War on Women to the States,” describes how such centers are fronts for anti-choice organizations to spread false information about abortion and deceive women:
In 2006, a congressional committee looked into federally funded CPC’s, and found that “the vast majority of the federally funded pregnancy resource centers contacted during the investigation provided information about the risks of abortion that was false or misleading,” and “in many cases, this information was grossly inaccurate or distorted.” The National Abortion Federation notes that such centers are mostly staffed by volunteers whose “main qualifications are a commitment to Christianity and anti-choice beliefs,” rather than by medical professionals, and “many CPCs are connected with religious organizations, but few disclose that fact in their advertising.”