'That young girl was me' Rep. Linda Duba shares abortion story during rally

Rep. Linda Duba (D-Sioux Falls) shared her abortion story for the first time in public during a reproductive justice rally organized by the South Dakota Democratic Party in Sioux Falls on Sunday.

Standing on a stage and speaking to a crowd of people dressed in green — the international symbol for abortion access — at Fawick Park, Duba told the story of a young college girl in the winter of 1976 who found herself pregnant. Although abortion had been legal in the United States for nearly three years with the passage of Roe v. Wade, abortions were still not provided in South Dakota.

“She came from a family who was pretty strict. She was worried about what people would think of her if they found out that she was pregnant and that young girl was me,” Duba said. 

Duba was one of five speakers, four of whom are running for office this November, who spoke about the importance of abortion access.

Across the county, abortion rights have become a rallying cry for democrats since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. Voters in Kansas rejected a ballot question that would’ve tightened abortion access for women in the state, according to the Associated Press.

Because of a 2005 trigger law, abortions in South Dakota are banned, even in cases of rape and incest. 

Duba said that women today must travel out of state, similar like she had to do 47 year ago when she was a sophomore at South Dakota State University and went to Minneapolis on a Saturday for a 15-minute abortion procedure.

“It was probably one of the scariest times in my life and then I came back home and I never told a soul,” she said.

During the rally, Rep. Jamie Smith (D-Sioux Falls) who is running as the Democratic gubernatorial challenger against Gov. Kristi Noem. He spoke about how the near-total abortion ban in South Dakota does not “reflect the values of most South Dakotans today.”

Smith decried Noem’s decision not to have a special session after the repeal of Roe when Democrats planned to introduce bills that would’ve protected abortion in cases of rape and incest.

“We [Democrats] wanted to do some simple things and at the very minimum, we wanted to save mothers from the cruelty of a ban that doesn't include exceptions to rape and incest. But you know what those basic proposals were ignored,” he said.