Friday on FNC’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) called the ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling “good news” and explained how her state of South Dakota’s trigger law would go into effect.
According to Noem, penalties for performing an abortion are aimed at abortion providers and do not punish mothers.
Partial transcript as follows:
INGRAHAM: Governor, great to see you tonight. Now, yours is one of the few states making abortion illegal immediately with few exceptions. Your response to those, including the President today, who said it puts women’s lives in jeopardy.
NOEM: Well, Laura, let’s remember that today is a wonderful day. Today is a day of good news, something that many people have waited many, many years to have happen that lives would be saved.
In South Dakota, we had a trigger law already in statute. And what it said was that abortions would be illegal, except to save the life of a mother at the moment that Roe v. Wade was overturned. So as of today, that trigger law goes into effect. And we are focusing a lot on supporting mothers, on supporting individuals who find themselves in a unplanned pregnancy or crisis situation and making sure that we’re connecting them to the resources that we have.
INGRAHAM: What is the approach that your state will take in the event that a woman seeks to have a chemical abortion, or abortion through medication, maybe getting medication in the mail? Because you’ve heard a lot of Democrats today saying that, they will not allow that to stop or be stopped by the states. In other words, I guess, interstate mail and so forth. What will your response to that be?
NOEM: Well, the statute and the language that we use will be specific to being utilized for an abortion that is going to be referenced to that does not save the life of a mother. So that’s one of the things that I and legislative leaders have been working on.
We believe that we’ll call into a special session, because of this decision that came out today. And there may be some language that we want to address during that special session. And also, I launched a website today called life.sd.gov, which puts resources out there and information like this to those individuals that are in these situations and connects them to medical help. It connects them to adoptive services, to make sure that people really do have the information that they need at their fingertips.
But, Laura, this year, in legislative session, I brought a bill that dealt with chemical abortions to make sure that people were going to be protected from this dangerous situation of getting drugs through the mail, and being unsupervised for that medical procedure.
INGRAHAM: Will there be potential criminal penalties for doctors and/or women who obtain an abortion in that manner? Or who conducted abortion contrary to state law?
NOEM: Yes. Our penalties are focused on the doctor that performs the abortion. I don’t think our message here today should ever be on punishing mothers. I would like to see that we focus on making sure that those doctors who knowingly perform abortions when they know it’s against the law that they are punished. And that’s some of the statute that we’ll be looking at as we go into a special session.
INGRAHAM: Governor Noem, we appreciate it. Thank you so much.
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