A Dangerous Loophole: Abortion Pills Undermining South Dakota’s Pro-Life Laws
Written by Grace Sargent for South Dakota Family Voice, December 15, 2025.
Written by Grace Sargent
On Monday, December 8, gas stations across South Dakota put up signage above their pumps offering solutions for “women with unwanted pregnancies”.
The signs posted read “Pregnant? Don’t want to be?” with a link to the organization’s website.
Mayday Health, the group sponsoring the ads, claims to be giving the public medical information and access to abortion care available to them in states where abortion clinics do not practice abortions due to pro-life laws.
Though South Dakota law has wonderful protections for the unborn, the prohibitions against the abortion pill have run into road-blocks when it comes to enforcement. The pills are illegal here, but they’re still being sent to South Dakotans.
Accessible through mail by providers across the country and internationally, women are still able to terminate their pregnancies in South Dakota via this loophole. Mayday Health is capitalizing on this defect, claiming to be using their free speech to inform women of their “options”. A report from the Guttmacher Institute shows a statistic of 63% of all US abortions are done through the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol.
Governor Larry Rhoeden issued a statement earlier this week calling for an investigation into the campaign and labeled the campaign as a threat to the state’s pro-life values. His attention to this matter prompted the involvement of Attorney General Marty Jackley, who issued a cease and desist order to Mayday Health, ordering the organization to immediately stop running its abortion-pill related advertisements in South Dakota.
Jackley’s letter asserted that Mayday Health’s ads are misleading to South Dakota consumers about state law, describing their efforts as “a deceptive act”. He threatened a lawsuit against the company should they resist taking their signage down.
The abortion pill, mifepristone, while marketed as safe and non consequential, has proven to be more of a horror than a help. Women across the country are being led to believe that the abortion pill is a safe alternative to abortion procedures. Before the Dobbs Decision, the chemical abortion industry was beginning to boom. Untested pills coming in from India, Kazakhstan, and all over the Middle East that could be fake or contaminated are infiltrating into the markets, creating even steeper risks from the already dangerous abortion pill.
A sickening 1.14 million abortions were had in 2024, and an estimated 1 in 4 abortions were from pills. Chemical abortions have been the cause of over 642,700 abortions in the US in 2023. As you can see, we have a lot of work to do if we want to eradicate abortion once and for all in South Dakota.
Thank you again to Grace Sargent and South Dakota Family Voice for permission to reprint this article.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments at hegop@nvc.net or heidi@sdgop.com.
Heidi Engelhart, South Dakota Republican National Committeewoman
Excellent reporting on the interstate commerce challenges here. The jurisdictional puzzle this raises is facsinating because state attorneys general are basically powerless when medications cross state lines through the mail, something the Dormant Commerce Clause wasn't designed to handle. I saw something similiar when states tried regulating online gambling back in the early 2000s. AG Jackley's cease and desist might pressure gas station owners but dunno how it'll actually prevent the flow of pills through federal mail systems.