Abortion Clinic on SD Reservation

Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Reservation may open an abortion clinic if the South Dakota state law forbidding abortions except under extreme circumstances passes.

In the 1960's, I spent several weeks at St. Francis and was "principal" of a summer school there. This was prior to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and subsequent publicity made the Reservation a national byword.

In a recent Senate election, the Republican candidate in SD was narrowly ahead until a boxful of votes from the Reservation arrived and happened to be almost all Democratic, changing the outcome of the election. So Pine Ridge is either all-Dem or related to the Daley Cook County apparatus in Illinois!

When I was there, the average life expectancy was below forty for males, as alcoholism and driving at high speed across the hilly expanse of the large reservation ended the lives of many boys in their teens. Although St. Francis School was run by the Jesuits, few Indian grads ever went to college. Perhaps that has changed, but the dreary lives on Pine Ridge did not entice kids to move off the Reservation.

The clinic on reservation land seems to be a PR stunt, as SD women wanting an abortion would travel less far to Minneapolis or Omaha than to Pine Ridge from any SD population centers! Maybe the female "chief" is running for higher office?