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04/02/2006:

"Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to offer abortions"

If South Dakota's abortion ban stands, it won't ban them from all parts of the state. The Oglala Sioux tribe president wants to open a women's clinic on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation that will offer abortions only if House Bill 1215 becomes law.

Cecilia Fire Thunder, President, Oglala Sioux Tribe

"The best solution to abortion is to make sure that women have access to contraceptives, have access to family planning options, and that information needs to be out there at all times where all women of childbearing age have that information and use it."

For those reasons, Fire Thunder wants to open a women's clinic on Pine Ridge, providing women with birth control options and proper health care, and if 1215 passes the clinic would also provide abortions.

"We just want to make sure that something is done for women who make that decision. All we can do is provide that to them, no questions asked. It's their choice. It's between her and God and that unborn baby. And I honor that."

South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long says providing an abortion on the Pine Ridge Reservation is not unlawful because state law doesn't apply to sovereign land.
msnbc.msn.com

What an astonishing historical irony. If they had been able, the US government would have aborted every Lakota baby.