Hold the phone: Anti-abortion calls are anti-democracy

The first use of a new law that allows petition signers to withdraw their signatures turned ugly recently. The law was designed specifically to allow people who signed an abortion rights petition to withdraw their signatures. Put into use, the practical application of the law has ranged from annoying to insulting.

The plot thickened when callers for the South Dakota Petition Integrity political action committee started phoning more than 700 citizens who signed a petition to allow an abortion rights measure on the ballot. Those citizens were randomly selected by the Secretary of State’s Office as part of the petition validation process. 

Republican runs afoul of anti-abortion groups after labeling their phone calls a ‘scam’

Callers asked if citizens were misled when they signed the abortion rights petition. Rep. Jon Hansen, a Dell Rapids Republican and the sponsor of legislation that created the new law, alleges that some signers were duped into thinking they were signing a petition to repeal the state sales tax on groceries rather than the abortion rights petition. 

Some people who received those calls complained to the Secretary of State’s Office. They said that the callers were representing themselves as working for the Secretary of State. A quick investigation by Attorney General Marty Jackley found that the callers had broken no laws. 

Rick Weiland, who led the effort to put the abortion measure on the ballot, said in a South Dakota Searchlight story that the phone tactic “smells of voter intimidation and harassment.”

Hansen was quick to point out that the phone effort doesn’t fall under South Dakota’s legal definition of harassment. Maybe it doesn’t qualify as harassment. It does qualify as an insult to democracy. 

Who among us, after signing a petition, wants to be cold called by a stranger questioning our actions, asking if we really knew what we were signing and implying that we were duped because we don’t know any better? While the Hansen-sponsored law says citizens have a right to take their name off a petition, calling and asking someone to remove their name is an insult to a voter’s intelligence. 

All along, the goal of the Life Defense Fund and South Dakota Petition Integrity has been to keep the abortion rights measure off the ballot. That hardly seems sporting after Weiland and Dakotans for Health collected about 55,000 petition signatures, far more than the 35,017 that they needed to get on the ballot. 

Now, using information it gleaned from its calls to petition signers, the Life Defense Fund is threatening legal action to disqualify the measure from appearing on the ballot. It’s imperative to Hansen to keep the measure away from voters because abortion rights measures have done so well on the ballot. In 2022, amendments that would restrict abortion rights were defeated in Kentucky and Montana. Ballot measures that protected abortion rights were approved in California, Michigan and Vermont. 

Instead of making an effort to get signatures off the petition or making their case to a judge and jury, the Life Defense Fund should go about this the old-fashioned way — taking their plea directly to voters. Maybe they’re trying to keep abortion rights off the ballot because they know what kind of voters they’re dealing with. 

South Dakota was among the last states to implement a seat belt law because opponents said they didn’t want a government rule strapping them into their cars. The mention of a motorcycle helmet law still raises a howl in this state where people are loath to have the government tell them what to put on their heads, even if it’s proven to be for their own good. Hansen and his telephone minions can probably predict how South Dakota voters will react when the state’s strict abortion law is presented in political ads as state government bullying its way into the bedroom and the doctor’s office. 

As a Catholic, I find myself a reluctant ally of Hansen and the Life Defense Fund. If South Dakota can buck the national trend and defeat an abortion rights measure at the ballot box, I’ll take pleasure in that outcome. I will, however, take no pleasure in the fact that the anti-abortion forces in this state used tactics that were an insult to the petition process and a threat to democracy.