Abortion ban puts GOP on the spot

Democrats force issue in South Carolina by rejecting exceptions for rape and incest.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina Senate committee voted Tuesday to remove exceptions for rape and incest from a proposed abortion ban, setting up a showdown among Republicans, with some wary of passing such a restrictive bill.

Democrats helped set up the fight, choosing not to vote with three Republicans who wanted to keep the exceptions in the bill.

A bill without the exceptions was failing in the state House last week before votes to allow abortions for rape and incest victims up to the 12th week of pregnancy.

The Senate Medical Affairs Committee voted 9 to 8 Tuesday, with all but two Republicans voting against sending the bill to the full Senate, where debate was expected to begin Wednesday morning.

Democrats also refused to vote on other proposals by Republican Sen. Tom Davis, who wants the bill to be modified from a total ban.

His proposals included increasing access to contraceptives and including birth control in the state’s abstinence-based sex education, as well allowing an abortion if a fetus has a medical condition that won’t allow it to live outside the womb.

Democrats are not going to help Republicans out of a box of their own making by turning “an awful bill” into “a very bad bill,” Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto said.

We are “highlighting the fact a bunch of extreme, Republican men are trying to control women’s decisions in South Carolina — they need to own that,” he told reporters.

Republicans told their Democratic colleagues their strategy was shortsighted.

“We heard a lot of talk about protecting women’s rights. It looks like when they had a chance, they didn’t,” Republican Sen. Michael Gambrel said.

Several GOP senators say they cannot support the bill without exceptions in cases of rape or incest.

Senators will get another chance to change the bill Wednesday, including adding the exceptions back or making amendments that were rejected at Tuesday’s meeting.

The current bill bans all abortions in South Carolina except when a woman’s life is at risk. It previously also had exceptions for rape or incest. In those cases, the doctor would have had to tell the woman the rape would be reported and her name would be given to the county sheriff. Abortions in such cases would have been allowed up to 12 weeks after conception.

The proposal would have also started child support payments at the date of conception and require a father to pay half of pregnancy expenses, including the mother’s share of insurance premiums. The father of a child by rape or incest would also have had to pay for mental counseling for the mother.

South Carolina currently has a ban on abortions once activity can be detected in cells that will become a fetus’ heart, which is usually about six weeks. But that law has been suspended while the state Supreme Court reviews whether it violates the state’s constitutional right to privacy. That leaves the state’s older 20-week abortion ban in effect.

Abortion bans have had mixed success in state legislatures since Roe vs. Wade was overturned in June.

Indiana passed a ban in August that takes effect later this month, with exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the woman’s life.

West Virginia’s Legislature could not agree on stricter rules during a special session in July.

And Kansas drew South Carolina lawmakers’ attention when nearly 60% of voters there rejected a ballot measure that would have let Kansas’ Legislature ban abortion. The two states voted for then-President Trump in nearly identical percentages in 2020.

Davis and fellow Republican Sen. Sandy Senn, who voted against the bill in committee, have said they can’t support it as written. Another GOP senator, Katrina Shealy, has said the state’s current law is fine.

Other senators have suggested privately that the Legislature didn’t need to rush into a special session and could have waited to see how South Carolina’s sixweek ban and total bans in other states worked out.

Davis told the committee he thinks the rights of a woman who is pregnant to control her own body have to be balanced with the rights of fetuses to their lives, so he considers it too extreme to ban all abortions or to allow abortions at any stage of pregnancy.

Davis also said that if the state is going to require more women to have babies, then it owes them birth control options and better prenatal care, and owes their children better educational opportunities.