HB1274

The amendment fundamentally redirects the bill from restricting abortion-inducing drugs shipped into South Dakota to broadly prohibiting the dispensing, distribution, sale, or advertisement of any articles or things usable for unlawful abortion, while removing the private wrongful death cause of action and replacing it with enforcement solely through the Attorney General's civil penalties (up to ten thousand dollars per violation). This shift dramatically broadens the bill's scope from targeting a specific category of drugs to encompassing virtually any object or advertisement that could be used for abortion, and centralizes enforcement power in the state rather than allowing individual citizens to sue.

The amendment restructured the bill by adding an amendment to existing law (§ 22-17-5.1 on administering abortion-inducing substances) as Section 1, making the prohibition on dispensing abortion-related items the new Section 2, and renumbering subsequent sections accordingly—this STRENGTHENS the bill by explicitly grounding the new restrictions in existing criminal abortion law rather than standing alone. The substantive changes to the bill's purpose are minimal; it maintains the Class 6 felony penalty, the ten thousand dollar civil penalty cap, and the attorney general's enforcement powers.

This is a formatting change converting the bill from engrossed (working draft) to enrolled (final passed) status, with no substantive changes to the bill's actual provisions—the document now includes standard legislative certification pages and signature lines for the Governor and Secretary of State.