MORNING HEADLINES | The S.C. Senate Medical Affairs Committee on Tuesday advanced a strict abortion ban bill on an 8-4 vote along party lines, with one exception: Republican Sen. Tom Davis, who voted “no.”
“This bill isn’t going to get debated on the calendar,” Davis vowed, according to the S.C. Daily Gazette. “This bill couldn’t muster 15 votes in that Senate, much less votes to invoke cloture. I’m not sure what we’re doing. And if we’re trying to make the case for life — the people of South Carolina to instill a culture of life — this bill fails.”
The proposed bill would ban abortions as soon as a pregnancy can be clinically diagnosed, strike exceptions for rape, incest and fatal fetal anomalies, add criminal penalties and reclassify abortion-inducing drugs as Schedule IV controlled substances.
“This law is so out of step with where South Carolinians are,” Davis said Tuesday. “It does not create a culture of life. It creates a culture of surveillance, of family conflict, of legal terror. It sends a horrible message.”
In recent days, the bill’s loudest critics have been warning it was cruel, government overreach that would criminalize doctors and patients and even allow for women who had abortions to be put in prison.
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