Victims of rape and incest would no longer have access to abortion in South Carolina if a bill set for discussion in the S.C. Senate Medical Affairs Committee on Oct. 1 ever becomes law.
Sponsored by Anderson County GOP Sen. Richard Cash with cosponsors Sens. Rex Rice, R-Pickens, and Billy Garrett, R-Greenwood, the so-called Unborn Child Protection Act would replace the state’s six-week abortion ban with a complete ban at conception. It also would make abortion a felony on a par with homicide. Current exceptions for rape, incest and fetal anomalies would be eliminated.
Under the proposal, people could face 30 years in prison for a variety of violations, from performing an abortion or helping a person to get an abortion to taking a minor out of state to get the procedure. The bill, however, has unclear language related to the fate of South Carolina adult women who received abortions – in or out of the state. But in a Sept. 4 press release, the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina argued that it would, in fact, “allow imprisonment up to 30 years for a person having an abortion.”
Also in the proposed bill: the apparent criminalization of popular forms of birth control including the pill, hormone injections and implants, many IUDs and emergency “Plan B” contraceptives.
Cash introduced the bill in February, telling his colleagues that “human life begins at conception and deserves legal protection.” He later added, “I don’t see how any of us could be satisfied with having a law on the books that does not actually protect human life beginning with the biological beginnings of human life, which is fertilization.”
But ACLU-SC Advocacy Director Courtney Thomas called the legislation “unconstitutional and deadly.”.
“This bill would criminalize medical care, invade our privacy, and place unconstitutional restrictions on speech, travel and association. Any lawmaker who cares about the health and safety of South Carolinians should be fighting tooth and nail to stop this bill.”
South Carolina’s current six-week ban is already one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the industrialized world, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
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