FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—South Dakota pro-lifers say they experienced physical threats, verbal abuse, doxing, and stalking from a pro-abortion group collecting signatures for its radical referendum ballot measure.
Dakotans for Health “used antifa-style actions, lies, and abuse to illegally get Amendment G on the ballot,” according to Chris David, a South Dakota resident and volunteer with the pro-life organization Life Defense Fund.
State constitutional Amendment G, or the Right to Abortion Initiative, allows abortion right up until birth for nearly any reason that a doctor thinks is a “health” risk to the mother.
Because the amendment overrides existing state laws, opponents say it would remove parental consent requirements for a minor to get an abortion and would force doctors and nurses to perform abortions without exemptions from conscience protections.
To get the amendment on the ballot, Dakotans for Health gathered 55,000 signatures, many of which Life Defense Fund contends are likely invalid.
The petition circulators were “verbally abusive and even physically threatening,” David said in a statement to Life Defense Fund that was shared with The Daily Signal.
“Circulators doxed us online with lies and vulgarities, asking their followers to identify us, asking where we worked, and who family members were by name, including asking for my children’s names,” David said. Doxing refers to publicly identifying or publishing private information about someone against their will.
The pro-life volunteer claimed she saw Dakotans for Health lying to voters to get petition signatures while she volunteered with Life Defense Fund urging people not to sign the petition.
“They purposefully misled South Dakotans, downright lied to petition signers to get signatures, and they broke election law doing it,” David contended.
Life Defense Fund is suing Dakotans for Health, claiming it deceived voters about what the amendment does, allowing signatures of people who aren’t registered to vote, and failing to pass out petition-circulator handouts, which are required in South Dakota to explain what people are signing.
“Dakotans for Health did their very best to keep potential signers of the petition from knowing exactly what it was about,” Life Defense Fund attorney Sara Frankenstein told The Daily Signal.
Dakotans for Health denied Life Defense Fund’s claims.
“This is utter nonsense and an obvious attempt to distract from their failed campaign to stop the people of South Dakota from even having a vote on their radical abortion ban—one that forces victims of rape and incest, even children, to carry to term,” the organization told The Daily Signal. “Our petitioners are thoroughly trained and dedicated to ensuring that South Dakotans have accurate information about Amendment G, which simply restores the reproductive rights women had for 50 years under Roe v. Wade.”
An anonymous South Dakota Democrat said Dakotans for Health petition circulators used that claim to deceive her about the scope of the amendment.
“I was approached to sign this petition outside of work,” the unidentified woman said in a statement to Life Defense Fund that was shared with The Daily Signal. “It was conveyed to be as a ‘pro-Roe v Wade petition’ to reinstate the original Roe v Wade abortion conditions. Had I known that this petition was for the purpose of allowing full-term abortions, I never would have signed.”
“The means with which the petitioners got signatures is nothing short of a gross misrepresentation of information,” the registered Democrat continued.
Life Defense Fund’s case against Dakotans for Health claims that it violated a number of election laws. The circuit court has not yet set a date for the trial, though a signed order from a judge said the trial would begin the week of Sept. 23.
If Life Defense Fund wins the case, the amendment would be disqualified from the ballot and invalidated, and Dakotans for Health would not be allowed to serve as a ballot committee again.
Mary, another Life Defense Fund volunteer who asked to keep her last name private, said in an affidavit shared with The Daily Signal that Dakotans for Health circulators prevented her from talking to voters about the extreme nature of the abortion amendment.
“During those days, I was physically blocked from sharing my handout, stepped on, sworn at, mocked, and called names,” Mary said. “One of my first days out, the petition circulators called the police on me because I pulled out my cellphone to record, and [they] told lies about me.”
Mary said she never saw a petitioner give a circulator handout to a signer.
Last October, Mary said, an abortion petition circulator stepped in front of her and blocked her attempt to share information with a woman considering signing the pro-abortion petition.
Another petitioner then told the woman the amendment would just restore pre-Roe v. Wade abortion law, which was overturned by the Supreme Court in June 2022.
“Restore just how it was before,” the circulator stated, according to Mary. “It’s the original Roe v. Wade, and that’s the language we want in the amendment.”
When Mary corrected the woman that the amendment would provide for abortion for all nine months of pregnancy, the circulator told the woman interested in signing that was a lie. After that, a male petitioner followed Mary home in her car, switching lanes whenever she did, until she was able to lose him in a school zone. Mary reported the incident to the police.
Police told her she could file charges if it happened a second time.
“I just hope that voters read the entirety of the initiated measure and think carefully before they vote,” Life Defense Fund’s Frankenstein said. “But better yet, I hope the court disqualifies the measure because cheating should not be allowed to get you on the ballot when we have election laws that should have meaning that should be enforced.”
