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Sunday, March 26, 2006

some rather GOOD news

it appears there is a damn good chance women CAN have a choice in south dakota if need be. thanks to the sovereign nation of the oglala sioux on the pine ridge reservation Tribal leader rallies for abortion clinic on reservation
By Bill Harlan, Journal Staff Writer
Oglala Sioux Tribe President Cecelia Fire Thunder says a clinic on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation could provide abortions if South Dakota’s new abortion ban goes into effect.
“We’re working on it,” Fire Thunder said in a telephone interview Friday. “This is a free-choice issue. If I were in that situation, I’d want somewhere to go where I’d be taken care of.”The new South Dakota law bans all abortions except to save the life of the mother — with no exceptions for rape or incest.Fire Thunder said the state law would not apply to the reservation. “We’re a sovereign nation,” she said.The new law is set to go into effect July 1, but a court challenge almost certainly will delay it, and opponents of the law are already gathering signatures to put it on the ballot in November.Fire Thunder, in fact, is one of 15 co-leaders of the new South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, which on Friday announced a statewide campaign to overturn the new law.South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long declined to comment on the proposal, saying he likely would have to write a description of the new law for ballots in November.Long said that major crimes committed on reservations come under state jurisdiction if they are committed by non-Indians against non-Indians. Other major crimes fall under federal law.Rapid City attorney Charlie Abourezk, who has experience in Indian law and who has represented tribes and President Fire Thunder, said Indian doctors might be immune from the new state law if abortions were done on a reservation — whether the woman was Indian or non-Indian.University of South Dakota law professor Frank Pommersheim, an expert in Indian law, agreed that Fire Thunder’s proposal was “potentially workable” — especially if doctors were Indians and if the clinic were on Indian trust land........
and fromwomyn "To me, it is now a question of sovereignty." President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, says "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

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