COLUMBIA, S.C. (Washington Insider Magazine)- In a special session convened following the US Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, South Carolina senators opposed a ban on nearly all abortions on Thursday when 5 Republicans, comprising all the female senators in the chamber, declined to support it.
Despite having a majority in the 46-member senate of 30 Republicans, Republican Sen. Tom Davis’ threatening filibuster could not be stopped, according to ABC NEWS.
The 3 Republican senatorial women, a 5th Republican senator, and all the Democratic senators joined Davis in opposing the proposed ban. Davis served as the chief of staff for former governor Mark Sanford prior to getting elected to the Senate in 2009.
Since women have rights too, Davis claimed he made a promise to his daughters that he would not vote to render South Carolina’s existing 6-week abortion ban tougher.
Senator Shane Massey, the majority leader in the Senate, said the abortion ban was unlikely to succeed after a break to consider their alternatives.
Senators did manage to adopt a few amendments to the 6-week ban, including reducing the amount of time victims of incest and rape had to seek an abortion from 20 weeks to around 12 weeks and mandating the collection of DNA from the aborted foetus for law enforcement. The House enacted a prohibition with an exemption for rape or incest, thus the bill now returns there.
The 6-week ban in South Carolina is presently on hold while the state’s Supreme Court considers whether it breaches privacy rights. The state’s 2016 abortion ban 20 weeks after conception is still in force in the meantime.
The South Carolina General Assembly was convening in a special session to attempt to become the thirteenth state to outlaw abortion.
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to stop a pregnancy in June, the majority of them arrived through so-called trigger legislation intended to criminalise the majority of abortions. A new restriction that was imposed by the Indiana legislature last month is still in force.
The discussion began on Wednesday with 3 Republican senators from South Carolina who spoke one after the other and said they couldn’t support the measure unless the exclusions for rape or incest were reinstated.
Senator Katrina Shealy said that the 41 men in the Senate would be best served by watching the faces of the girls in their churches’ Sunday school classes and listening to their mothers, children, wives, and granddaughters.
Massey assisted in negotiating the Republican agreement that temporarily brought back the bill’s exclusions. He said that over 3,000 abortions occurred within the first 6 weeks of a pregnancy in 2021, according to state health officials.
Republican women in South Carolina stood up for all women, according to Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, but Republican men let them down. Democrats, he claimed, were opposed to any amendments to the legislation as it is.
The Senate version, according to Republican Governor Henry McMaster, who has previously stated that he would be content if there were no abortions in the state, achieved the right balance, according to the governor’s spokesperson Brian Symmes.
A total ban, said to Republican Senator Sandy Senn, who opposed the 2021 6-week restriction, would violate the privacy of every woman in the state.
