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Mount Rushmore an abortion battleground
Associated Press
Published March 18, 2006
PIERRE, S.D. - The superintendent of Mount Rushmore was surprised at first when people from all over the country started calling to express their opinion about South Dakota's ban on nearly all abortions.
Some callers said they were so upset that they would never visit Mount Rushmore, South Dakota's No. 1 tourist attraction. Others said they were so thrilled that they would make a point of coming to see the chiseled faces of four U.S. presidents in the Black Hills.
On further reflection, Gerard Baker said he decided that the messages from far and wide made sense, because Mount Rushmore is a symbol of freedom.
"That's what we're all about here," he said. "That's what America is all about, people expressing their freedom and people expressing their choices and so forth."
In an uproar that has taken many South Dakotans by surprise, politicians and state agencies have been bombarded in the past few weeks with thousands upon thousands of calls, letters and e-mails - both pro and con - from across the country and around the world.
And a few small groups have called for a tourism boycott of South Dakota, urging people to avoid such attractions as Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, and the Corn Palace, an arena in Mitchell whose walls are covered with colorful ears of corn.
The furor was prompted by the passage of the strictest abortion law in America - a ban on all abortions except to save a woman's life, with no exceptions for rape or incest. The measure, set to take effect July 1, is aimed at overturning the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade that established the right to an abortion.
Tourism is South Dakota's second-largest industry, behind agriculture, with visitors to the state spending $809-million in 2005, according to the Tourism Department.
State tourism director Billie Jo Waara said that her office has been getting a dozen or so calls a day. So far, "it's unclear whether it will be significant or not," Waara said.
[Last modified March 18, 2006, 02:30:29]
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