South Dakotans spend hundreds of thousands of dollars vs. federally funded abortion activists

from Stand Firm by Timothy Fountain

Editorializing via headline, the left-leaning Sioux Falls Argus Leader  front page suggests that we should just save the money and embrace abortion on demand:

“Abortion law legal defense: $377,735”
Deep into the article, we find that the Attorney General and legislature did not go it alone,

The taxpayer-funded portion of the bill does not account for fees picked up by the Alpha Center and Black Hills Crisis Pregnancy Center, who signed on to the lawsuit as interveners, and the amounts covered by the anti-abortion legal defense fund that was created in 2006 to allow for private donations in abortion-related lawsuits.

We also find out that the state spent less than it expected:

...the cost is far lower than some in the Legislature feared when debate on the measure began.

In other words, the State of South Dakota budgeted funds for legal action, and private groups and citizens also funded the effort to make available actual medical data, choices and protection from coercion to women considering abortions.  It wasn’t just some wingnuts here and there busting the public budget.  The Argus could have reported the amount spent under more accurate headlines, like “Public and Private Funds Cover Defense of Informed Consent Law.”

But why did SD have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first place?  Because a federally funded activist group sued South Dakota with more in mind than overturning the law:

Planned Parenthood was seeking more than $750,000 in lawyer fees in the event of a legal victory.

That’s right, these lawsuits are not just to impose abortion on demand upon unwilling states, or to deter them from passing pro-life legislation by making it too costly.  The suits are yet another fund raiser for PP - which as I said already recevies federal funds from our taxes.  Only a fool believes all of that public money goes directly to educational materials or family planning advice, and one has to be pretty gullible to believe that the 3/4 of a million bucks that PP wanted from SD would go to attorneys.  It’s all about securing compensation for activists who don’t really produce much of anything but lawsuits and death.

South Dakota’s victory in the 8th U.S. Circuit puts the full SD statute into effect and denies PP a big payday.