Opinion: Here’s why you shouldn’t trust politicians who promise not to prosecute women seeking illegal abortions

About the only consolation pro-choice advocates could take in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case, removing federal protection of abortion access, is that politicians and establishment pro-life groups were almost universal in saying that women choosing to have abortions will not be prosecuted in states where the procedure is now illegal. Take the words of the anti-abortion governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, who told “ABC News” that when her state’s trigger law making abortions illegal takes effect she didn’t “believe that mothers in this situation [should] ever be prosecuted. Now doctors who knowingly violate the law, they should be prosecuted.”