SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - The South Dakota Senate yesterday passed a bill prohibiting abortions when the pregnancy reaches twenty weeks.
Republican Senator Deb Soholt of Sioux Falls, a women’s health nurse, spoke against the bill.
In her opposition speech, Soholt says she's probably the only person in the statehouse who has held the hand of a woman, as she wept, when she found out there was twin-to-twin transfusion in the fetus.
Soholt says both would die, unequivocally, or one could live. Soholt says it was the woman's choice to have one healthy baby. She says in that decision, "it's not our (legislator's) business to insert ourselves." She says the decision is the mothers regardless of what Deb Soholt believes or says.
Amendments included reducing the penalty for performing an abortion after twenty weeks and an exemption if there’s a health risk to the mother.
Abortions are currently allowed in the first 24 weeks. The bill changes the fetal-pain standard to twenty weeks. The measure now goes to the House