Efforts to pass abortion ban in SC halted until January 2023
Only a day after elections, where four states, including Kentucky, voted to protect abortion rights through ballot initiatives, South Carolina lawmakers met Wednesday to find a compromise on a version of an abortion ban and failed.
Six members of the conference committee met first at 10 a.m.
Sen. Richard Cash, R-Anderson and Rep. John McCravy, R-Greenwood, again emphasized a proposal that would use the House version as a bedrock and would recognize that "life begins at conception." This meant that it would ban all abortions at the time of conception, with exceptions for pregnancies due to rape and incest.
Sen. Majority Leader Shane Massey reiterated that the Senate did not have the votes to pass such a proposal and that any proposal that banned abortions before six weeks would fail on the floor. Massey said that he intended to meet again after the Senate finished voting because he expected the chamber to reject the bill. In his view, he wanted to find a way to at least pass something.
No compromise reached:Upstate lawmakers propose near-total abortion bills
As expected, the Senate tabled the conference report. McCravy and Rep. Spencer Wetmore, D-Charleston, did not show up to the conference committee meeting held after the session. This meant that any opportunity of passing an abortion ban has ended, at least until the new session reconvenes in January of next year.
A visibly frustrated Massey said that he agreed with Cash when he said that this was the best time to pass an abortion ban, as the fate of the original six-week heartbeat bill hinges upon a judgment from the state Supreme Court. However, the House's reluctance to meet again and find a compromise was a legislative error, he said. The Senate version, a harsher and more restrictive six-week abortion ban, introduced through Massey's amendment back in September, banned all abortions from week six after conception and included exceptions for pregnancies borne from rape, incest, or if a mother's life was in danger or there were fetal anomalies. This version, Massey said, was not a "touchdown," but it was a "first down."
"Fire and brimstone ain't going to win y'all," Massey said, adding that the harsher six-week legislation would have sent a message to the SC Supreme Court and would have taken the state away from being the most lenient in the southeast U.S. when it came to abortion rights.
What has happened so far
The proposal that went on the Senate floor was the one that was proposed by Cash, which used the House version as a foundation.
In his proposal, Cash said that he had removed any reference to contraception to avoid controversies that suggested that birth control was in danger. He also added Senate language that prohibited the usage of fetal tissue from an abortion and banned state funding of Planned Parenthood, a proviso that is part of every state budget.
The third and most notable addition was the repeal of Roe’s codification in the state’s law.
While the Senate version instituted a six-week time period that allowed abortion, it also offered a "fix" for a loophole in the 2021 six-week heartbeat law.
A section in the 2021 law said that the act should not be construed as an effort to repeal the codification of Roe v. Wade in state law, done originally by the South Carolina General Assembly in 1974.
When the SC Supreme Court temporarily blocked the six-week fetal heartbeat bill after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this past summer, the court emphasized the loophole and said the legislature's clear intent to retain the 1974 adoption of the Roe framework alongside the Act "arguably creates a conflict in the law." Both McCravy and Cash added the Senate "fix" to their proposals.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: South Carolina abortion ban halted until January 2023
