Gifts reported in abortion ban campaign

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - The campaign supporting South Dakota's sweeping abortion ban has raised slightly more money — most of it from in-state sources_ than the ban opponents, whose funds came overwhelmingly from out of state, according to finance reports made public Thursday.

Voters will decide Tuesday whether to reject or uphold the law, which was passed by the legislature earlier this year and would ban all abortions except to save a pregnant women's life.

Vote Yes For Life, which supports the ban, filed reports showing about $2.2 million in cash donations. Campaign manager Leslee Unruh said about 65 percent came from in-state donors.

The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, which opposes the ban, said it has raised just over $2 million — more than 90 percent of it from out-of-state.

Lindsay Roitman, campaign manager for Healthy Families, said the group needed to tap into funds outside the state because opponents put the issue on the national agenda.

"We knew from the beginning that we were going to need to raise money nationally," Roitman said. "And when you write a law that directly challenges a constitutional amendment that protects privacy, people across the country are obviously concerned about that."

Major donations to Healthy Families included $375,000 from the Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota Action Fund; $100,000 from the American Civil Liberties Union; and $100,000 from Dallas oil man Lee Fikes.

The Minnesota/Dakotas Planned Parenthood group also reported raising an additional $301,000 for the cause on its own.

The biggest contributor to the pro-ban campaign was a corporation set up in September by state Rep. Roger Hunt, the abortion bill's prime sponsor; it made two donations of $250,000 each. Other major donations included $265,000 from Sioux Falls businessman Dwight Beukelman; $150,000 from the American Family Association of Tupelo, Miss.; $70,000 from the Knights of Columbus and $60,000 from Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based conservative group.

[Scrum]

People from out of state shouldn't be helping to affect laws there.

It goes against having these states with different rules.