South Dakota's ban on nearly all abortions, signed into law Monday, has opened deep rifts within both the antiabortion and the abortion-rights movements, as the two camps struggle to frame the issue to their political advantage.
The divisions have turned traditional abortion politics topsy-turvy.
Some foes of abortion -- fearful that South Dakota has moved too far, too fast -- now find themselves reluctantly opposing efforts to protect all fetal life from the moment of conception. They are even angling to block another abortion ban that seems likely to pass in Mississippi.
For their part, some abortion-rights activists feel they must acknowledge the sentiment behind the South Dakota ban by assuring America that they, too, regard abortion as a grave moral concern. But such language outrages others in their movement, especially abortion doctors, who feel it stigmatizes and alienates their patients.
"There's a mood out there that change is in the offing," said John Seery, a professor of politics at Pomona College who has written extensively on abortion. "There's a lot of jockeying, a lot of testing, a lot of pushing the envelope."
The turmoil in both camps underscores the significance of South Dakota's law. It bans all abortions in the state, including the few performed each year in cases of rape and incest and the hundreds done in the earliest weeks of pregnancy. The only exception is if physicians deem an abortion necessary to save the mother's life.
Doctors who violate the ban would be subject to as much as five years in prison.
In signing the bill, Republican Gov. Michael Rounds acknowledged it was, for now, a symbolic gesture. The law is due to take effect July 1 but will almost certainly be blocked in the courts because it directly -- and deliberately -- challenges Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established abortion as a constitutional right.
An anonymous donor has pledged $1 million to help South Dakota defend the new law in court. Citizens of more modest means have also stopped by the governor's office to drop off checks.
Those backers hope the ban will give the Supreme Court an opportunity to reverse Roe vs. Wade, much the way the justices used Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 to overturn a decades-old precedent that allowed segregation in public schools.
