SIOUX FALLS, SD – Cultural warriors have their eyes trained on a single South Dakota ballot initiative that could prove to be the decisive turning point in the four decade long struggle over abortion.

   In February both houses of the South Dakota state legislature passed the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act (HB 1215), which bans all medical and surgical abortions in the state.

   The bill passed with strong bi-partisan support. South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed the bill into law in March.

   American Life League (ALL) executive director David Bereit termed the South Dakota vote “incredibly crucial” to the pro-life movement. “It sets a high legal precedent for pro-life legislation. It’s the first time that a state has had the opportunity to go to the polls and vote to end abortion in their state.”

   The South Dakota law is the first total ban on abortion passed in the 33 years since Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion on demand the law of the land.

   After the abortion ban was passed and signed into law abortion groups used a loophole in the South Dakota election code that automatically delays implementation of the law until it can be placed on the ballot following November for a public vote.

   In what many pro-life Christians consider to be an “unholy cabal” a small group of pastors from historically liberal denominations has joined forces with abortion groups such as NARAL–Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood and abortion supporting Democrats to try and confuse South Dakota Christians and convince them the abortion ban should be overturned at the polls.

   Past surveys have always shown South Dakotans to be extremely conservative on social issues and firmly in support of the right to life. A recent poll indicated that nearly three-fourths (74%) of all South Dakotans oppose abortion on demand.

   But following a month-long advertising blitz by abortion advocates and the resultant confusion over the abortion rights pushing pastors, recent polls show the issue to be a statistical dead heat with likely South Dakota voters.

   Ministers from five mainline Protestant denominations – the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the United Methodist Church - criticized South Dakota's abortion ban in an Oct. 10th press conference in Sioux Falls. Claiming the abortion ban somehow restricts religious freedom “Pastors for Moral Choices” said the abortion ban was “neither just nor compassionate” and would return the state to a "regressive, discriminatory and dangerous way of life."

   Reading from a prepared statement the liberal pastors proclaimed, "We seek to promote social policies that are fair, equitable and above all, merciful.”

   “This is what troubled many Christians,” Bereit acknowledged. “(Abortion activists) going in and organizing in the Churches.”

   Bereit said that ALL had received several reports “from people in their own congregations who are outraged that their pastors would take such a position on the abortion ban to side with the abortion industry and reject God’s word on this.”

   To advocate such an abortion favorable theology would require those pastors Bereit said to reject the biblical tenant that proclaims “that before we were formed in the womb, God knew us.”

   Bereit said the idea of targeting sympathetic pastors was posited by abortion activists during an August nationwide conference call as being one of three primary strategies for defeating the South Dakota ban.

   The battle plan centered around three main theatres of operation where the abortion backers would focus their resources: a ground operation to get voters out to the polls that supported overturning the ban; going into churches and organizing pro- abortion people within churches, and a media war.

   A copy of the transcript of that conference call obtained by CCN-USA confirms Bereit’s allegation.

   During the call Planned Parenthood and their affiliated speakers describe South Dakota as ‘Ground Zero’ in the abortion war and categorize the ban as “the most important fight of this election cycle.” Campaign to Overturn the South Dakota Abortion Ban conference call was hosted by Sarah Stoesz, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood (Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota) and included South Dakota Democrat congresswoman Stephanie Herseth; NARAL- Pro-Choice America President and CEO Nancy Keenan; Cecile Richard, CEO of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund; and former South Dakota senator and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, among others.

   On the call Herseth said overturning the ban at the polls Nov. 7th would “send shockwaves to red states and will redefine the way this issue is perceived.”

   Referring to their second key objective, Planned Parenthood’s Stoesz stated: “Number two, we want to organize like-minded churches. The Lutheran Church, the Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, and other churches right within their church doctrine oppose efforts to restrict the woman’s right to an abortion and we want to organize within those churches just like the opposition will within the Catholic Church, within the fundamentalist churches, etc. So that’s going to be a very important piece for us. And the third part is the paid media. We’ve brought on David Axelrod who is an incredibly good media consultant out of Chicago. He worked with people like Barack Obama and others.”

   Unencumbered by election laws pertaining to individual candidates Daschle prodded the abortion backers to freely open their wallets. “We can take unlimited amounts of money from any source, and so the opportunities are here to do things that you can’t do in typical political campaigns.”

   According to Bereit, Pro-lifers in the state are operating on a $86,000 budget while in the past month alone abortion groups have poured in a staggering $8 million dollars to purchase advertising time and pay activists canvassing the state politicking to overthrow the ban. “It’s truly a David and Goliath situation,” said Bereit.

   Bereit said the abortion industry sees the South Dakota vote as potentially disastrous to their financial bottom line. “They recognize that this is a defining battle.”

   “Despite the huge influx of cash and the accompanying media ad buy blitz, Bereit said ALL supporters “who are monitoring the opposition effort” from the inside report “they are running scared right now. There’s really a sense that (the added attention to the measure, the pastor recruitment and its resultant backlash) is working against them.”

   That prospect Sedlak said, has things getting ugly.

   “With all this momentum on the pro-life side, the pro-abortion side is taking out its frustrations in various ways,” Sedlak said. ALL has received confirmed reports that Vote Yes on Referred Law 6 yard signs had been stolen throughout the state. In Sioux Falls some of the signs were set ablaze. Others had bloody coat hangers painted over the message. Churches supporting the abortion ban have been vandalized and defaced. During a Youth rally, a pro-life worker’s car was broken into and heavily damaged.

   Sedlak said many of the Vote Yes signs were spray-painted with a stencil. The top of the stencil is an outline of a baby in the womb. Under the baby's outline is the two word slogan – "Eat Babies."

   As for the Reverends working on the side of the abortion industry, Sedlak stated, "I pray that these pastors come to realize how they are being used by the abortion industry to promote the brutal killing of innocent children."

   Legal analysts believe that since the South Dakota abortion ban is a state initiative, it presents a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, and as such that it would likely be fast–tracked through the legal system to an ultimate showdown before the Supreme Court. If overturned, the issue of legal abortion would then be returned to the states, where it would be decided by state legislatures directly answerable to that state’s electorate. More than a dozen states lined up behind South Dakota, introducing similar bills – Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, Missouri and Rhode Island among them.

   “My hope is that we see this issue and this fight head back to the states,” Bereit said. “Because when it gets to the local level people are by and large pro-life.”