Sentencing provisions of South Dakota's new abortion ban

According to this CNN.com story, South Dakota's new law banning nearly all abortions provides that doctors who perform an abortion (except to save a woman's life) "can be charged with a felony punishable by up to five years in prison."  This reference prompted me to check out the text of the new South Dakota law, which is known as the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act and is available here.  The law simply provides that any doctor performing an illegal abortion is guilty of "a Class 5 felony."  A separate section, available here, sets forth South Dakota's sentences for different classes of felonies.

To get some perspective, I explored South Dakota's homicide offenses and discovered that the state's two degrees of murder, two degrees of manslaughter, and vehicular homicide are all graded more severely than a Class 5 felony.  (Aiding a suicide, however, is a Class 6 felony.)

There seems to be relatively few Class 5 felonies in South Dakota.  Based on a quick review of South Dakota's criminal laws, it appears that perjury under oath, promoting prostitution, forgery, distributing over an ounce of marijuana, and threatening a juror are all Class 5 felonies.  Theft of a firearm and theft of over $1000 both qualify as more serious Class 4 felonies, along with rioting and vandalizing property worth over $1000 and tampering with a witness. 

In short, South Dakota's new law to ban abortions, examined purely from a sentencing perspective, has some surprising company.