Planned Parenthood Director: Total Abortion Ban and Death Penalty Are On the Republican Legislative Agenda

Scenes from the South Carolina Statehouse lobby. (Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA)

Buckle up, South Carolina. The legislature hasn’t even begun its new session, but it is already coming hard and fast against women – again. Not content with a six-week abortion ban – before most women know they’re even pregnant – now they want to ban all abortions with no exceptions. They will force children who are victims of rape or incest to give birth. While children may be able to get pregnant, their bodies aren’t made for pregnancy or childbirth. Ask yourself – would you want your daughter to be forced to give birth after she has been violently abused?

Families who receive a devastating diagnosis of a fetal abnormality that will result in death or a painful life-limiting condition will be forced to continue their pregnancies against their will, resulting in ongoing anguish for the parents and their families, a potential loss of fertility, suffering for the baby if it survives birth only to suffocate, and possibly death for the woman. We’re not talking about simply “sick” babies as some of the cruelest Republicans have claimed. We’re talking about those who will never have a chance at life without pain and suffering.

Members of the Freedom Caucus, the most extreme faction of the SC House of Representatives, have doubled down on the war on women and introduced a bill to punish women who have an abortion with the death penalty. That’s what they call “pro-life” these days.

You won’t be surprised that South Carolina has the lowest percentage of women in our legislature. It is all men who sponsored the death penalty bill. The total abortion ban bill is sponsored by 28 men and two women. Women’s decisions around pregnancy are decided by men who will never get pregnant or know the medical complications women can face.

As we know, the cruelty is the point.

A History of Anti-Abortion Legislation

This is not our first go-around with these bills. Within days after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the Republican leadership called a special session to immediately ban abortion. Even when abortion was legal under Roe, Republicans still passed unconstitutional abortion bans and restrictions in South Carolina and introduced a bill every year to declare a fertilized egg to be a person with more rights than the woman within whom that egg lived. They’ve paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawyers defending their legislation in the courts.

South Carolina’s legislature is not unique or special in their full-throated endorsement of bills to control women’s reproduction. Every state with a Republican majority legislature has passed an abortion ban. Without looking at a map, you know it’s going to be the Southern states. They do this in defiance of the majority of people in every state – including the Southern Republican ones – support abortion rights.

Every poll conducted in South Carolina since anyone began polling residents about abortion has shown that only a small fraction of residents believe abortion should be banned. Even those who say they oppose abortion generally believe that it is a private decision between a woman and her doctor, and politicians should stay out of it. These poll results have remained the same no matter who conducted the poll – Republican and Democratic pollsters, universities, and even the conservative SC Policy Council. SC citizens support the right to an abortion. Full stop.

That is exactly why Republican hardliners refuse to put the question on the ballot and let voters decide. They know they’ll lose. But reasonable Republicans support a ballot measure. Letting the people decide takes the debate out of the State House where they’re forced to vote with their party rather than do the right thing or vote the way constituents want.

Legislative Priorities: Misplaced and Harmful

Because Republicans hold the House, Senate and governor’s office in SC, some have said they have a mandate from the people. That is a false belief in a system that has allowed them to pick their own voters rather than letting the voters pick them. Gerrymandering spreads Republicans across multiple districts while packing Democrats into the fewest districts possible. With the average breakdown of votes for president, South Carolina is roughly 55% Republican, 45% Democratic. Yet because of the way district lines are drawn, Republicans control 70% of the House of Representatives, 74% of the Senate, and 86% of our state’s congressional seats. These numbers have allowed Republicans to push the most extreme agendas with little debate.

So, if the people overwhelmingly support abortion rights, why do they continue to vote for the Republicans who ban abortion? If you’re reading this article, you are already engaged in the civic discourse, paying attention to politics and policy. But polling shows 80% of South Carolinians can’t name their own state legislator. Half can’t name one of our two US Senators (Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott) and a third can’t tell you that Henry McMaster is governor. If voters don’t know who their state legislator is, they certainly don’t know how he votes. There is no mandate from voters to ban abortion. And Republicans know it. That’s why they won’t allow us to vote on an abortion ballot measure.

You won’t be surprised that a state that prioritizes banning abortion and refuses to expand Medicaid to provide more residents access to routine healthcare has the worst rankings in all quality-of-life measures. South Carolinians suffer more chronic health problems like diabetes, heart disease and obesity. We die earlier. We earn less. We have worse education outcomes. More women die during pregnancy and childbirth and more babies die at birth and before their first birthday. With abysmal problems like these facing our residents, surely legislators are introducing legislation and policy recommendations for improving our health outcomes and quality of life. Wrong. To address our problems, legislators have introduced a total abortion ban and proposed executing women who have an abortion.

The Broader Consequences of Anti-Abortion Policies

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned and South Carolina implemented its current early abortion ban before most women even know they’re pregnant, the situation for women and children has only gotten worse. After years of having the 8^th highest maternal mortality rate, South Carolina declined further and now ranks 7^th. More women die in South Carolina than in 43 other states. Pregnancy is not a benign condition. It is not always the glowing, celebratory event you see on television or hear about from male legislators. Women develop diabetes, high blood pressure, and other chronic conditions during pregnancy. They bleed to death during childbirth, suffer strokes and heart attacks, and develop deadly infections. A joyful event for many, pregnancy and childbirth become a deadly condition for others.

One-third of our counties don’t have a single obstetrician to deliver babies. Failure to expand Medicaid means rural hospitals have been forced to close and at least one hospital has closed its Labor and Delivery Unit because they didn’t have an obstetrician/gynecologist (OB/GYN). Many pregnant women are forced to travel an hour or more to obtain prenatal care and to deliver in a hospital. Then there are others without the means to pay for medical care or the ability to travel to obtain it. With the risk of jail, loss of their medical license, and the threat of financial destruction looming over doctors who provide abortions to South Carolina women, we have already seen the exodus of many OB/GYNs from South Carolina. Fewer doctors are choosing to come to South Carolina and medical school admissions for students who want to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology have declined. Doctors don’t want to practice in a state where they cannot provide the full range of medical care to their patients. They don’t want to go to jail for providing an abortion to a patient whose own life is deteriorating from their pregnancy because electrical impulses could be heard.

We know about the deaths of women who were allowed to bleed to death or developed sepsis as a result of failure to manage a miscarriage in Texas and Georgia, thanks to the news media, most notably ProPublica. We have heard from a doctor that at least one woman has died because she was denied an abortion in South Carolina. But unless the state health department records the death as pregnancy or childbirth-related, we’ll never know. We know about the Texas and Georgia deaths because the families of the women who died spoke up about the care their loved ones were denied.

Rather than respond to the deaths with improved medical care, expanded resources, and clearer abortion laws, politicians in Texas and Georgia have just shut down the committees that study pregnancy-related deaths and silenced committee members from sharing any information with the news media or the public. Maybe lawmakers think if we don’t know women are dying, we’ll all just pretend it’s not happening. We also know anti-abortion groups knew women would die because of the extreme abortion bans they demanded. They just determined that women’s deaths are an acceptable risk in exchange for the potential birth of a fertilized egg, a zygote, an embryo or a fetus. Already living, breathing person dies – that’s acceptable. Not yet born organism dies – we won’t stand for that.

What Comes Next?

The upcoming state legislative session which begins Jan. 14 will be a doozy. Leaders in both chambers have said their priorities are passing a massive energy bill and school vouchers that defund public schools and direct more tax dollars to private and religious schools. They will try to find a way to bypass the Constitution in a way that their new hand-picked Supreme Court justices will approve or authorize a ballot measure that would allow voters to decide if we want to amend the Constitution to allow our tax dollars to go to private schools. They’ll consider letting us vote on sending tax dollars to private schools, but they won’t let us vote on protecting our privacy and allowing abortions.

What Can You Do?

I’m frequently asked why we’re not gathering signatures to place the abortion question on the ballot to let voters decide. We don’t have that option in South Carolina. We are one of 24 states that don’t give voters any rights to bring ballot initiatives forward or to petition the government for a right to vote on important issues. Only the legislature can approve putting a question on the ballot and they have refused to give us a vote on abortion because they know where the majority of us stand. They insist on keeping that power to themselves so they can defy the wishes of all their constituents.

While legislators have so far refused to give us the vote, that doesn’t mean pressure and outreach from voters is ignored. Your legislator needs to hear from you. Everyone should call their legislator and insist on several things:

1. Reject the death penalty for women who have an abortion.

2. Do not pass a total abortion ban.

3. Let citizens vote on abortion so that the majority’s wishes are respected.

Now, since most of us don’t know who our legislator is, here’s where to find that crucial information. Click on this link to go to the SC State House website. Enter your address and it will tell you who your state representative, state senator, US senators, and US representative are. When you click on your legislator’s name, you’ll get all their contact information so you can call, email or text them demanding they vote no on abortion bans.

Most legislators are on at least one social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter X, and the new BlueSky. Post on their pages or send them messages through social media.

The important thing is that you reach out to your legislator. The method doesn’t matter. Use all of them! There should be a groundswell of public outrage for the actions Republicans are taking to ban abortion and put women’s lives at risk.

We love South Carolina and because of that, we demand that our lawmakers protect women and respect our ability to make decisions that are best for ourselves and our families.