This fall, amid furor over the election of Barack Obama to the presidency and Democrats' widened majority in Congress, three states quietly defeated anti-choice ballot measures, California, Colorado, and South Dakota.

Of these, perhaps South Dakota is the most perplexing. South Dakota is a state with a small population and very few cities. Although the state hasn't been polled on abortion except for how they might vote on the 2004 and 2008 abortion ban measures, even pro-choice advocates in the state readily admit that the majority of the state would self-identify as pro-life. John McCain and Sarah Palin easily won the state this fall, and an abortion ban with no exceptions passed with vast majority in both houses of the state legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Mike Rounds more than two years ago. To the surprise of the pro-choice movement, the state overturned the ban in a November 2006 referendum by a wide margin. Exit polls suggested that many voters were uncomfortable with the lack of exceptions for a woman's health and life written into the ban. A poll by the Argus Leader, South Dakota's largest newspaper, run shortly after the 2006 abortion ban defeat, showed that a vast majority -- by a 28-point margin -- would support a ban with exceptions.

So the pro-life movement in South Dakota gave it another shot. They put an abortion ban with vague exceptions on the ballot this fall and looked forward to seeing it sail to victory. Less than a month before the election, a poll showed voters split evenly on the measure, 44-44 percent, and 12 percent were still undecided. On Election Day, the measure was defeated by 10 points, 54 to 44 percent. So how does a state, in which most voters would probably still identify as pro-life, manage to defeat abortion bans twice?

This was a question recently explored in an article by Denise Ross in The New Republic. Ross concludes that "revisiting the debate over four years and consumed by it throughout 2006, [the state's electorate] has just gotten so educated on the issue that they are now uncomfortable with black-and-white formulations that bans contain." Indeed, the region's Planned Parenthood and the pro-choice coalition South Dakota Healthy Families used language and messaging very different from national pro-choice groups.

Sarah Stoesz, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota, credits the win to a well-run campaign with broad grassroots support. But it wasn't a strategy run only by outside consultants, with slick advertisements and catch phrases like "My Body, My Choice" or "Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries." In fact, the word "choice" was abandoned by the coalition fighting the abortion ban in South Dakota altogether. Instead, the coalition took a pro-family approach, using the word "baby" where mainstream pro-choice groups would have used the word "fetus." One Healthy Families ad featured a woman named Tiffany Campbell, who appeared with her husband and son. In the television ad, Campbell explained that during her pregnancy they discovered twin-to-twin syndrome, a condition in which one fetus would need to be terminated for the other to survive. Campbell phrased it this way, "I would have buried two babies." Much of the language in the ads talked about families making decisions without government interference.

"We were completely ready to and did redraft all of the usual rhetoric that is used by people on our side," Stoesz said. She noted a lot of feminists on the national level were upset at a pro-choice campaign that would abandon rhetoric built on for decades, but Stoesz isn't sorry she abandoned the rhetoric. "As the head of Planned Parenthood [in the region] I'm responsible for keeping the sole abortion clinic in South Dakota open and I'm responsible for making sure there is a strong base of support for women's reproductive health in South Dakota," she said. "South Dakota isn't Manhattan. It isn't San Francisco. It isn't even Chicago and it's not even Minneapolis. It's so different. The culture is so different."

The coalition looked to open up a discussion and stay away from polarizing debates. They wanted to humanize abortion in a way that had rarely been seen in a campaign. Stoesz talked about how during the campaign in 2006, many national feminist groups criticized their messaging for saying that the ban went "too far" because it did not contain exceptions, implying that a ban with exceptions would be acceptable. "That made people very uncomfortable. But we had to start there," Stoesz said. Instead of casting actors in their ads, they used real South Dakota women who were willing to share their stories. "This had started in 2006 spontaneously on its own," Stoesz said. "People began telling their stories about abortion to one another in South Dakota in a way that doesn't happen in any other place in the country. I'm just not aware of any other community, certainly not state, that has engaged in a lengthy and meaningful discussion about abortion. But that [has] happened in South Dakota now for over two years."

The campaign tapped local women like Campbell to appear in their ads and tried to get those that might otherwise identify as pro-life to talk with women in their communities about abortion. Stoesz found that people who were morally opposed to abortion found that "women and families who choose to have abortions are not that different from themselves."

Stoesz thinks this is a sign that the pro-choice movement needs to put aside some of the choice-based language it has been using for years. "This proves conclusively that it's time to give up the old rhetoric and use language that is empathic and that people relate to," she said. "People don't like to be bullied. There's a large portion of people who are morally uncomfortable with abortion but don't want to ban it."

Nathan Peterson, director of the South Dakota Healthy Families campaign since 2006 and lifelong South Dakota resident, noted that South Dakota, like many other conservative states with large rural areas, might not fall neatly along party lines.

"There are certainly large numbers of Democrats in South Dakota that voted in favor of the abortion ban and, in a similar fashion, large numbers of Republicans that voted against it. It's not necessarily tied to a political party in South Dakota," Peterson said. Volunteers who canvassed in the state didn't simply find that people were pro- or anti-choice. "When we were training our volunteers and when we were training our staff we knew that we could knock on five different doors and find five different points of view on this issue. It wasn't going to serve us well to take one particular stance on abortion and try to convince those five people that they should think the exact same way," he said.

Of course, it helped the campaign that the legislation was badly written and raised a lot of questions about exactly how much access the government would get to medical records. Peterson found that it was especially helpful to focus on these concrete consequences of the legislation. "The 2008 law in particular, we talked about how section 18 of [the proposed abortion ban] would have forced doctors to turn over their patients' complete medical records to the state department of health," Peterson said. "It would essentially give the government access to our personal medical information. We were able to make much more progress in convincing people that, whatever personal opinion on abortion might be, trying to pass this kind of legislation would have disastrous consequences." Eventually, by raising the question of state interference and by offering stories of real women who talked about their decisions, the campaign seemed to prove to voters that no "health exception" would be sufficient to protect women's health.

The campaign found support in surprising areas of the state. "Many would consider the Western portion of South Dakota more conservative. In the Western half of the state Republicans enjoy a larger registration advantage, for example," Peterson explained. "[But] We had much more support in the Western part of the state than in the Eastern part of the state and I think that's because some of that libertarian mindset. Whatever an individual's personal opinion may be [on abortion] it starts a very bad precedent to start letting government dictate what medical decisions people can and can't make."

For now, Healthy Families has committed to staying organized in the state since supporters of the abortion ban have made statements that they might try again. The Vote Yes For Life website says, "We shall rise and fight again." But people in South Dakota, now after more than four years of intense discussion and debate over abortion seem tired of it. "Everyone in the state now wants to work toward reducing unintended pregnancies and improving education," Peterson said. "They would rather reduce incidences of unintended pregnancy than rehash the same divisive debate."

Abortion will remain legal in South Dakota. Stoesz and the Healthy Families coalition were successful in defeating a ban that positioned itself as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. Perhaps now, instead of rerunning the same old abortion debate, the debate about comprehensive sex education and increased family planning can begin.

Join Kay Steiger, author of this article, and others on RH Reality Check, for a live discussion on the future of reproductive health and rights. Join us and ask your questions!

Written by Amanda Marcotte for RHRealityCheck.org - Information, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

Few reproductive rights stories caught the public's imagination in 2008 like the conflict over the Bush administration's attempt to rewrite HHS regulations to expand the powers of anyone working in the health industry to interfere with a woman seeking reproductive health care by claiming religious disagreement. By niftily claiming that health care workers can "believe" that hormonal birth control is abortion---which has the same scientific basis as believing unicorns are real---a wide range of health care workers can interfere with a woman's access to birth control, as well as abortion. The proposed rule change caught the public's imagination in part because of the petty, vindictive nature of it. Here is the Bush administration, openly encouraging health care workers to sit in judgment of female patients on a case-by-case basis and, should some women not suit their tastes, interfere with their health care on an individual level that would surely come across as nasty and vindictive in person. As, I would argue, it's meant to do.

This rule change is nothing short of overriding the wishes and expectations of the larger population to cater to a fanatical religious right. The rule change not only reflects the values of the religious right, but also their tactics. Unable to enact large-scale bans of contraception and abortion, anti-choicers have declared a form of trench warfare against the women of America for possession of the uteruses of America. In real trench warfare, you "win" a "battle" by gaining a few feet of territory. In the trench warfare of reproductive rights, anti-choicers consider a few women inconvenienced, humiliated, or even forced to become pregnant or give birth against their will a victory worth savoring.

But for most Americans, government regulation of health care is about, well, regulation. We want regulations to standardize health care so that we'll get the same quality of service every time we go to the doctor or pharmacy. "Regulations" that turn health care into a lottery --- will I get good service this time, or an anti-choice vigilante interfering with me? --- doesn't even make sense to most citizens.

Despite the opposition to the rule change and the fact that it's almost surely going to be reversed after a pro-choice President and pro-choice Congress are sworn in, the Bush administration seems perversely determined to push this through, giving themselves an extra 30 days to sneak the new rules under the door (The rule is in the final stages of review). It forces one to wonder what they hope to accomplish by pulling this stunt.

I theorize that it's an attempt to galvanize the religious right after a set of demoralizing losses in 2008. Nothing gets the right worked up like convincing themselves that they are an oppressed minority because they're not permitted to push their religious beliefs on others using government power. We all know the litany of battlegrounds: creationism in the science classroom, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, teacher-led prayer in school, mandatory "Merry Christmas" instead of the more inclusive "Happy Holidays". And some of these battles are losing their power to motivate the religious right. They need something new and fresh so they can continue to distract the nation from important issues like the economy, and so they can become an obstacle between the new administration and genuine progress.

These rules are tailor-made to create such an uproar. Given a new right to hijack health care in order to harass women, the right will feel the pinch when it's taken away, even if they only have this right for a few days. Email lists and fliers claiming that the Obama administration has written "new" rules oppressing fundamentalist Christians will proliferate.

Marilyn Keefe, the Director of Reproductive Health Programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families, explained two ways that the new HHS rules could be returned to their prior state if the Bush administration does pass them. Obama could suspend the rule when he enters office, and, after a period of public notice and comment, rescind the rule completely. Alternatively, Congress could repeal the rule by either introducing a bill to do it, or putting the repeal in another bill.

Both strategies have drawbacks. The congressional strategy requires building a coalition on what will be reported as an abortion bill, which is usually a bad bet. But if the right is gearing up to play the "poor oppressed fundamentalists" card, then there's a specific danger in Obama's administration repealing the rule, which will encourage the religious right, already rife with conspiracy theories about Obama being everything from a secret Muslim to the Anti-Christ, to focus their attention 100% on crippling the Obama presidency. At least with the congressional pathway, the responsibility and therefore the right wing attention is diffused.

That said, using this as a new strategy to work people into a frenzy over the poor, oppressed Christians could very likely backfire. Successful campaigns are those that court the sympathies of Christian-identified Americans who may not be devout or fundamentalist. You need issues that nod to a general Christian dominance without having any consequences that will disturb the everyday life of more moderate Christians. Prayer in schools and "Merry Christmas" includes them. Many fail to empathize with those who are hurt by a ban on same-sex marriage. But if you interfere with their ability to access contraception, they will resist you. Without these moderates on hand, the religious right will find their ability to generate outrage to be sorely limited.

Join Marilyn Keefe, mentioned in the article, and others on RH Reality Check, for a live discussion on the future of reproductive health and rights. Join us and ask your questions!

Written by Loretta Ross. Appears on RHRealityCheck.org - Information, commentary and community for reproductive health.

I have spoken on many campuses in the wake of the "Genocide Awareness Project," which displays posters at colleges to create controversy among young people about Black abortion. Students are understandably confused when presented with seemingly fact-based information that claims that Black women are the scourge of the African American community. I provide accurate historical and contemporary information about Black women's views on abortion.

African American women who care about reproductive justice know that the limited membership in the Black anti-abortion movement doesn't represent our views and we are not fooled into thinking that they care about gender justice for women. In fact, if they had their way, we would be re-enslaved once again, based on our fertility.

But the Black anti-abortion movement needs to be taken seriously. The people involved in it carefully exploit religious values to make inroads into our communities. They poison the soil in which we must toil.

Carefully orchestrated campaigns by Black surrogates for the religious and political right not only oppose abortion, but they also organize on behalf of many other right wing causes, such as opposing stem cell research, supporting charter schools and opposing affirmative action.

Through clever positioning and photo-ops by the right wing, the Black anti-abortion movement appears stronger and more numerous than it actually is. Generously funded by a predominantly white anti-abortion movement desperate for Black representatives, the Black anti-abortion movement seeks to drive a wedge into the African American community.

They tell African American women that we are now responsible for the genocide of our own people. Talk about a "blame the victim" strategy! We are now accused of "lynching" our children in our wombs and practicing white supremacy on ourselves. Black women are again blamed for the social conditions in our communities and demonized by those who claim they only want to save our souls (and the souls of our unborn children). This is what lies on steroids look like.

Opposition Research Needed

Who are these people in the Black anti-abortion movement? This movement needs to be carefully studied through opposition research. Information on them, their connections to white anti-abortion groups and their sources of funding is scant.

Of course, the most famous of the Black anti-abortionists is Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She is a Pastoral Associate, a member of the avid anti-abortion group Priests for Life, and Director of African American Outreach for the Gospel of Life Ministries. Because her father was Dr. King's brother, Alveda is the leading voice for linking the anti-abortionists to the Civil Rights movement. This is despite the fact that both Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King were strong supporters of family planning in general, and Planned Parenthood in particular. Alveda King, who lives in Atlanta, has also spoken out strongly against gay rights and in support of charter schools.

A widely known Black anti-abortion minister is Rev. Clenard H. Childress of New Jersey, founder of the BlackGenocide.org project and website. He is the president of the Northeast Chapter of Life Education and Resource Network (L.E.A.R.N.), established in 1993. He claims that the "high rate of abortion has decimated the Black family and destroyed Black neighborhoods to the detriment of society at large." He led protests at the 2008 NAACP convention in Cincinnati and has accused the organization of practicing racism against Black children. He is also on the board of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform that circulates the Genocide Awareness Project.

Alan Keyes, perennial presidential candidate, is also well known in anti-abortion circles. Keyes first came to national attention when President Reagan appointed him as adviser to Maureen Reagan (daughter of the president), as she led the official U.S. delegation to the UN World Conference for Women in Kenya in 1985. At this meeting, the U.S. affirmed its support for the infamous 1984 "Mexico City" policy that banned U.S. funds from supporting abortion worldwide. Keyes helped lead the anti-abortion protests at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, and is a favorite of the right for his fierce extreme views on a number of issues.

There are a handful of other Black spokespeople for the anti-abortion movement. The point is not how many there are, but the disproportionate impact they have. They have created the false impression that if only Black people were warned that abortion is genocide, women would stop having them in order to preserve the Black race, either voluntarily or pressured by the men in their lives.

The Sexism They Sell

The sexism in their viewpoints is mind-boggling. To them, Black women are the poor dupes of the abortion rights movement, lacking agency and decision-making of our own. In fact, this is a reassertion of Black male supremacy over the self-determination of women. It doesn't matter whether it is from the lips of a man or a woman. It is about re-enslaving Black women by making us breeders for someone else's cause.

I am reminded of the comments of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress, who dismissed the genocide argument when asked to discuss her views on abortion and birth control:

To label family planning and legal abortion programs "genocide" is male rhetoric, for male ears. It falls flat to female listeners and to thoughtful male ones. Women know, and so do many men, that two or three children who are wanted, prepared for, reared amid love and stability, and educated to the limit of their ability will mean more for the future of the Black and brown races from which they come than any number of neglected, hungry, ill-housed and ill-clothed youngsters.

We need our leading African American women's and Civil Rights organizations to speak out more strongly in support of reproductive justice. We need to organize young people to resist the misinformation directed at them by these groups. Many of our campuses are unaware of the activities of the Black anti-abortionists until they show up, usually invited by a white anti-abortion group.

But mostly, we need to let the world know that they do not speak for Black women. As my mother would say, "they might be our color, but they are not our kind."