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Dakotans for Health
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Longtime Advocate Calls for Immediate Legislative Action to Restore Women's Reproductive Rights - Freedom Amendment Coalition Announced
June 7, 2024
Sioux Falls, SD...Rick Weiland, co-founder of Dakotans for Health and official sponsor of the citizen-initiated constitutional amendment to establish a right to abortion, announced today that Nancy Turbak-Berry will chair the Freedom Amendment Coalition.
“It’s about women’s reproductive freedom. We had it. They took it away. We want it back,” said Nancy Turbak, a lifelong Watertown native, as she accepted the chairmanship of the Freedom Amendment Coalition, a group formed in conjunction with Dakotans for Health to support its Freedom Amendment, which will be on the ballot this November.
“South Dakota’s radical anti-abortion law is just plain wrong,” Turbak stated. “It requires a woman who has been raped to give birth. It allows a doctor to be put in jail for helping a pregnant patient. And it strikes fear into the heart of every woman who has ever faced miscarriage, or any of the other many dangerous problems of pregnancy, fear that she will be denied proper care because her OBGYN is afraid to offer it for fear of being criminally charged. Every one of those things is caused by our radical anti-abortion law, and every one of them is absolutely wrong.”
Turbak, the mother of two boys, has practiced law in Watertown since 1982. She served for four years in the South Dakota State Senate and is a former magistrate of the Unified Judicial System. Her education began in a one-room schoolhouse in Kranzburg, South Dakota, and continued at Harvard College and the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California. However, she credits the debate skills she learned in South Dakota as “the most valuable single part of my education.”
“55,281 South Dakotans signed the petition to put the Freedom Amendment on the ballot, and we need the help of every one of them to give women back the personal freedom they deserve,” Turbak said. “My job is to tell the truth about the crushing injustice of South Dakota’s current anti-abortion law so we can restore the proper balance between personal freedom and government regulation that was lost when Roe v. Wade was struck down and anti-abortion absolutism was imposed on our women by force of law.”
“If the Governor and the legislature were actually representing the people who elected them, they would meet in an emergency session to repeal our extreme abortion ban right now,” Turbak added. “The people of South Dakota are fed up with politicians telling them how to live their lives. They are going to repeal the ban at the ballot box in November, but by law, the Freedom Amendment they will pass cannot go into effect until July of next year.”
“For 13 more months, South Dakotans who have problem pregnancies and girls who have been raped or the victims of incest will be chained to their pregnancies. For 13 more months, doctors and nurses will face jail for doing their jobs. So, I say to our state’s politicians, do your job. Represent the people who elected you. Give them back their freedom. Let them, not you, decide what is best for them. Convene a special session so they can be free tomorrow, not next summer,” Turbak concluded.
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About Dakotans for Health:
Dakotans for Health is a grassroots organization focused on healthcare and protecting the democratic process. In 2024, our petitions to restore abortion rights in South Dakota and repeal the regressive state sales tax on groceries were certified and approved by the Secretary of State. Vote YES on Amendment G and IM 28! The organization was also instrumental in the successful 2022 campaign to expand Medicaid coverage to 52,000 low-income South Dakotans. Dakotans for Health is dedicated to ensuring all South Dakotans have access to the care they need, no matter who they are, what they look like, or how much money they have.
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