South Carolina House passes bill banning most abortions
COLUMBIA, S.C. – The South Carolina House on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a bill banning nearly all abortions, following the lead of other states with similar measures that would go into effect if the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The bill faces a final procedural vote in the House on Thursday that is unlikely to change the outcome and will then be sent to the governor for his signature. Republican Gov. Henry McMaster has promised to sign the measure as soon as possible.
The Senate approved the measure on Jan. 28, after years of failed attempts. Republicans gained three seats in the 2020 elections and the newly energized 30-16 Republican majority made the proposal Senate Bill No. 1.
“This is the greatest prolife bill this state has ever passed,” said Republican Rep. David Hiott of Pickens.
The “South Carolina Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act “requires doctors to perform ultrasounds to check for a heartbeat in the fetus. If one is detected, the abortion can only be performed if the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest or the mother’s life is in danger.
The bill would not punish a pregnant woman for getting an illegal abortion, but the person who performed the abortion could be charged with a felony, sentenced up to two years and fined $10,000 if found guilty.
About a dozen other states have passed similar or more restrictive abortion bans, which could take effect if the U.S. Supreme Court – with three justices appointed by Republican former President Donald Trump – were to overturn
Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court decision supporting abortion rights.
Groups that oppose the bill will likely sue, keeping the law from going into effect. All of the bans passed by other states are tied up in court challenges.
While Wednesday’s House approval was nearly a foregone conclusion, the road there was rocky. One Republican lawmaker who wanted a stricter law saying fetuses have the rights of all citizens at conception threw up his papers and stormed out in a ruckus that angered the speaker. Most Democrats walked out of the chamber to protest the bill. They had to come back when a member of the party who left and returned made the rare request to have the clerk read the whole bill out loud before the vote, prompting Republicans to require that all lawmakers be present.
During the walkout, Republicans wiped out more than 100 proposed amendments. After holding a news conference to speak against the bill, several Democrats returned to express their opposition to the measure, which has come up for debate in the legislature numerous times over the past decade. Lawmakers approved the bill by a vote of 79-35. Two Democrats voted for the ban, and two Republicans voted against it.
“You love the fetus in the womb. But when it is born, it’s a different reaction,” said Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter of Orangeburg, the House’s longest serving member at 29 years. Cobb-Hunter noted how the General Assembly made the abortion bill a priority over education, several COVID-19 bills and almost everything else, and how some supporters of the ban balked at any requirement earlier this year that they wear masks while on the House floor and in committee meetings.
“‘The government not having any business mandating face masks’ sounds to me real close to ‘the government not having any business telling a woman what to do with her body,’” Cobb-Hunter said.
Numerous Republican lawmakers spoke in favor of the bill and many cheered after the vote. Supporters of the ban stood outside the House chambers applauding and hugging the lawmakers that pushed the hardest for the measure.
Rep. Melissa Lackey Oremus said she was 16 and in the top of her class when she had “a little fun one night – too much” and got pregnant.
The Republican from Aiken and now 42-year-old mother of three said she was unsure what to do until she had an ultrasound wand rubbed over her belly and heard her child’s heartbeat.
“That sound to me was, I had a human being inside of me,” Oremus said. “That sound, it was the most beautiful sound to me. How could I have a choice to kill that sound, to make it go away?”
The debate was briefly stopped by a Republican when Rep. Jonathon Hill, apparently angry his amendments to completely ban all abortions weren’t being considered, stormed to the House’s center aisle, threw his amendments up in the air and walked out.
Another representative picked up the papers.
“If it had been me, it would have stayed on the floor and I would have not allowed him back in the chamber until he picked it up,” House Speaker Jay Lucas said. “We are a legislative body. We have debate. We are not children. We don’t throw tantrums when we lose.”
Hill wasn’t immediately punished for his behavior.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – A spot on the Atlantic City Boardwalk where movie stars, athletes and rock stars used to party – and a future president honed his instincts for bravado and hype – was reduced to a dusty pile of rubble on Wednesday.
The former Trump Plaza casino was imploded after falling into such disrepair that chunks of the building began peeling off and crashing to the ground.
A series of loud explosions around 9 a.m. rocked the building, which started to collapse in a wave from back to front until it plunged straight down in a giant cloud of dust that enveloped the beach and Boardwalk. Overall, it took the structure less than 20 seconds to implode.
“I got chills,” Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small said. “This is a historic moment. It was exciting.”
He estimated the remaining pile of rubble is about eight stories tall, and would be removed by June 10. Some of it could be used by environmentalists interested in building an artificial fishing reef off the coast of Atlantic City.
Additional parts of the casino-hotel complex fronting on the Boardwalk and on Pacific Avenue, the main road along the row of casinos, were not included in the implosion. They will be demolished in the near future using heavy equipment, not explosives.
The removal of the onetime jewel of former President Donald Trump’s casino empire clears the way for a prime development opportunity on the middle of the Boardwalk, where the Plaza used to market itself as “Atlantic City’s centerpiece.”
“The way we put Trump Plaza and the city of Atlantic City on the map for the whole world was really incredible,” said Bernie Dillon, the events manager for the casino from 1984 to 1991. “Everyone from Hulk Hogan to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it was the whole gamut of personalities. One night before a Tyson fight I stopped dead in my tracks and looked about four rows in as the place was filling up, and there were two guys leaning in close and having a private conversation: Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty.”
“It was like that a lot: You had Madonna and Sean Penn walking in, Barbra Streisand and Don Johnson, Muhammad Ali would be there, Oprah sitting with Donald ringside,” he recalled. “It was a special time. I’m sorry to see it go.”
Although the former president built it, a different billionaire, Carl Icahn, acquired the two remaining Trump casinos in 2016 from the last of their many bankruptcies and owned the building.
The mayor proposed using the demolition as a fundraiser for the Boys And Girls Club of Atlantic City, and began an auction for the right to press the button that would bring the structure down.
But Icahn – a donor and former special economic adviser to Trump – objected on safety and liability issues, and got the auction house to halt the bids. Icahn said he would replace the $175,000 that had already been bid with his own money. A fundraiser for a VIP view of the implosion netted the club more than $16,000.
Opened in 1984, when Trump was a real estate developer in his pre-politics days, Trump Plaza was for a time the most successful casino in Atlantic City. It was the place to be when mega-events such as a Mike Tyson boxing match or a Rolling Stones concert was held next door in Boardwalk Hall.
Ron Gatewood, a food and beverage worker at Trump Plaza from 1986 until its closing in 2014, brought food and drinks to stars including Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross and Barry White in their hotel rooms.
“They were very downto-earth people,” Gatewood recalled. “They never made you feel less-than. They tipped very well. Well, some did, anyway.”
The casino even had a cameo in the film “Ocean’s
Eleven.” When George Clooney and Brad Pitt recruited actor Bernie Mac’s character to help with a Las Vegas casino heist, they plucked him from Trump Plaza, where he was a dealer.
Bob McDevitt, president of the main casino workers’ union, said the place oozed glamor and buzz when it first opened.
But things began to sour for Trump Plaza when Donald Trump opened the nearby Trump Taj Mahal in 1990, with crushing debt loads that led the company to pour most of its resources – and cash – into the shiny new hotel and casino.
“The moment that the Taj Mahal opened up, it began a decline for the Plaza,” McDevitt said. “In order to make sure the Taj Mahal was successful, they shipped all the high rollers from Trump Plaza and Trump’s Castle to the Taj, and they really didn’t invest in the Plaza much.”
The Trump Taj Mahal, one of the casinos acquired by Icahn, has since reopened under new ownership as the Hard Rock.
Trump Plaza was the last of four Atlantic City casinos to close in 2014, victims of an oversaturated casino market both in the New Jersey city and in the larger northeast. There were 12 casinos at the start of 2014; there now are nine.
By the time it closed,
Trump Plaza was the poorest-performing casino in Atlantic City, taking in as much money from gamblers in 8 1/2 months as the market-leading Borgata
did every two weeks.
Short-term plans call for the site to be paved to provide new parking while a permanent development project is considered.