(LifeSiteNews) — South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem on Thursday declared 2024 to be “Freedom for Life” year for the state, affirming that residents must “have the Freedom get off to the right start,” a right that “extends to every single South Dakotan – before they are born; after they are born; until the day they die.” 

Gov. Noem teased the announcement in her Tuesday State of the State address in which she affirmed that “[b]eing pro-life means valuing the child’s life before their birth and throughout their life; it also means valuing and protecting that mother’s life.”

She also highlighted the extraordinary development of babies born during the first 1,000 days of life (from conception to age two), underlining the importance of supporting both moms and their babies in healthy habits.

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“Research in the fields of neuroscience, biology, and early childhood development has given us powerful insights into how nutrition, relationships, behaviors, and environments in the first 1,000 days shape future outcomes,” she said. “Mom and baby must both be well nourished and cared for – that will lead to healthy physical, emotional, and mental growth as a child’s brain and body grow and develop.”

“We care about the lives of our mothers and children,” the governor said. “We have dedicated resources and time. But we can still do more to prevent the rising death rates of South Dakota moms and babies, particularly among Native Americans living on tribal lands.”

Data from 2021 indicates that pregnant Native American women have a maternal mortality rate nearly three times that of their white counterparts, with “121.77 maternal deaths per 100,00 births” compared with just 44 per 100,000 births for white pregnant women. Contributing factors reportedly include the high poverty rate among Native American women and a lack of access to checkups.

To support the lives and health of mothers and their babies, Noem advertised South Dakota’s Bright Start program, which works to “get one-on-one nursing services to first-time moms and their babies from pregnancy until the child’s second birthday.”

“The Department of Social Services’ Pregnancy Health Home will offer care coordination to all pregnant mothers who are enrolled in Medicaid,” she said in the Tuesday State of the State speech, adding that moms in the program will “also have access to prenatal and postpartum coverage for up to a year after birth along with well-child and health maintenance exams.”

The Christian governor and mother of three said the state’s social services department is also tasked with helping “pregnant moms struggling with substance abuse disorder, walking with them and holding them accountable through their treatment.”

Noem directed moms and others to visit the state government’s website, Life.SD.gov, which provides information regarding “pregnancy, parenting, available financial resources, adoption, and more.”

According to the governor, “[t]he most important way” for South Dakota to “advance” the freedom for life in the state is to take “care of both moms and their babies before birth AND after.”

Noem’s remarks come amid pro-abortion rhetoric claiming that opponents of abortion often discount the needs of the mother while prioritizing the unborn baby. Contrary to such claims, however, pro-life organizations provide innumerable resources to help both mothers and their babies.

Pregnancy resource centers, which vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood abortion facilities in the U.S., provide women experiencing crisis pregnancies with necessary items like formula, strollers, and diapers, as well as emotional resources like counseling.

According to a 2022 report by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, 828,131 lives have been saved from 2016 to 2020 thanks to the work performed by pro-life pregnancy centers, and millions have been saved since the first such centers were set up more than 50 years ago. Despite the life-saving work that pregnancy resource centers around the country perform every day, however, pro-abortion politicians have frequently maligned them as “fake” and worked to shut them down because they do not encourage women to kill their preborn babies. 

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Meanwhile, Noem’s remarks and declaration this week come as South Dakota has already made a name for itself as one of the most pro-life states in the nation.

The Mount Rushmore State started enforcing its near-total abortion trigger law after the overthrow of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022. 

Last year, Gov. Noem reaffirmed that killing preborn babies via chemical abortions remained illegal in the state despite the Biden administration’s moves to expand access to the lethal drugs.

“All abortions, whether surgically or chemically induced, terminate the life of a living human being,” Noem and South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley wrote in a January 2023 letter. “South Dakota will continue to enforce all laws including those that respect and protect the lives of the unborn. We trust pharmacists doing business in this state will take the same approach to respecting life.”