Meghan O’Brien, South Dakota Searchlight
South Dakota’s Republican attorney general asked a judge Tuesday for a court order to stop an abortion-rights ad campaign.
The request in Hughes County court comes after Attorney General Marty Jackley issued a cease-and-desist to Mayday Health, a New York-based nonprofit. The organization, which did not comply with the cease-and-desist, is running a gas-station advertising campaign that provides links to information about abortion pills with the tagline “Pregnant? Don’t want to be?”
Mayday Health is dedicated to educating people about the safety and effectiveness of abortion pills. The organization did not grant South Dakota Searchlight an interview, but referred to an Instagram post from Executive Director Liv Raisner.
In the post, Raisner said the advertisements are constitutionally protected. Mayday Health provides links to information, but does not sell abortion pills directly from its website.
“We’re not taking the signs down,” Raisner said in the Instagram post. “It’s First Amendment-protected free speech, and information is not illegal.”
South Dakota lawmakers adopted an abortion trigger ban in 2005 that took effect in 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortions are prohibited in the state, unless the mother’s life is threatened by a pregnancy. State lawmakers also passed legislation in 2022 banning “medical abortion by telemedicine.”
Jackley said the Mayday Health advertisements are illegally deceptive because the website leads consumers to believe that elective abortions and receiving abortion pills by mail are legal in the state. He also alleged that the ads are dangerous.
“These ads are targeting women — including teenagers — encouraging them to take these pills while misleading them about the potential physical risks,” Jackley said in a news release. “At the same time, they promote secrecy by urging women not to inform their doctors and children not to tell their parents.”
The campaign of gas-pump placards was set to launch at 30 gas stations around South Dakota on Dec. 8 and stay up for six weeks, according to Mayday. There were 14 locations that had the advertisements up as of Dec. 10, as confirmed by Mayday.
Several gas station owners have removed the advertisements voluntarily, according to the Attorney General’s Office. The attorney general’s lawsuit says only two locations still have the gas-station advertisements, in Brookings and Vermillion.
In its original news release, Mayday pledged a digital advertising campaign alongside the gas station ads. The group didn’t specify how the digital ads would appear, but said they would include “real people in South Dakota sharing their perspectives on what it’s like to live in a state with an abortion ban.”
In 2023, medication abortions accounted for 63% of abortions in the country, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute. The drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly used in medication abortions, are also listed on the World Health Organizations’ list of essential medicines. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an attempt by anti-abortion medical organizations to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s prescribing guidelines for mifepristone.
There is no date scheduled yet for a hearing on South Dakota’s lawsuit. The state lists an advertising company, Minnesota-based AllOver Media, doing business as Momentara, as a defendant alongside Mayday.