COLOMBIA – A bill to ban most abortions in South Carolina took yet another step to pass on February 9, stepping down from a House committee on party lines to establish a final debate on the House floor before the majority Republican almost certainly approves of it. .
After about two and a half hours of debate, most featuring long diatribes from Democrats who criticized the proposal as an affront to women’s freedom, the House Judiciary Committee voted 15 to 8 in favor of the so-called “fetal heartbeat bill” , “which would ban abortion after about 6-8 weeks of pregnancy.
Although tense, lawmakers on both sides of the corridor recognize that ongoing debates over the measure mean little more than going through legislative motions at the moment, with few or no legislators undecided about how they will vote.
Similar bills have been passed by the House several times before, in recent years, but have been held back in the Senate, where Democrats have managed to block them through extensive obstructions. That changed this year after Democrats lost three Senate seats in the 2020 elections. The Senate passed the bill last month.
State Representative Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, acknowledged that passing the bill is indeed inevitable, a fact she said would be clear to anyone who knows how to tell.
“There is nothing that Democrats can do to prevent this,” said Cobb-Hunter. “We all know that the fetal heartbeat bill will be approved based on House and Senate figures. The elections have consequences, and the approval of that bill is one of the consequences of the November elections.”
This did not prevent Democrats from spending hours speaking out against the bill, pointing out that most members of the committee and the House in general are men who would never have to grapple with whether to continue with a pregnancy.
Abortion ban bill approved in SC Senate as state nears probable legal battle
“I believe that abortion is a decision that a woman should make with her family, her doctor, but not her legislators,” said state deputy Spencer Wetmore of D-Folly Beach.
State Representative Seth Rose, D-Columbia, regretted that other legislative deals “have been mired again by a bill that we all know will do absolutely nothing but cost millions of dollars in taxpayer money”.
“In the middle of a pandemic where people and companies are already suffering, with unemployed people, is that what we choose to prioritize?” Rose added. “I think it is extremely deaf and very, very disappointing.”
State Representative John McCravy, the Greenwood Republican who has long advocated efforts to approve a ban on abortion in the House, said his supporters know the bill will face legal challenges, but are hopeful that the process will lead to the U.S. Supreme Court. to reconsider the limits that established the problem.
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In the historic decision Roe v. 1973, the Court concluded that women have a constitutional right to access abortions, a precedent that they have repeatedly maintained with some restrictions.
Many legal experts are skeptical that the Court, even with more conservative judges added in recent years, will be receptive to even taking the case, let alone ruling in favor of opponents of abortion. They still need to take less extreme measures, including a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi.
“That hasn’t persuaded the court so far,” said Carl Tobias, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Richmond. “They didn’t show much of an appetite to take Roe down or accept these cases. So maybe that will add fuel to the fire, but I think it’s mainly a political argument.”
Tobias said the case is likely to cost the state millions of dollars in attorney fees and will take several years to reach the courts.
Democrats noted that the bill would likely require doctors to use transvaginal ultrasound with medical instruments inserted into the body of women because external ultrasound does not normally detect cardiac sounds until at least 10 weeks of pregnancy.
They proposed four amendments, including those to require the state to take financial responsibility for the children of women who have had abortions denied or to delay the bill’s entry into force until the Supreme Court decides on a different bill. All were rejected, mainly on party lines.
Follow Jamie Lovegrove on Twitter @jslovegrove.