Breaking: South Carolina passes abortion ban

Abortion access in the South close to eradicated

I’m so sorry to say that the South Carolina Senate passed a 6-week abortion ban tonight. It’s headed to Gov. Henry McMaster, who is sure to sign it.

Vicki Ringer of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic says the organization is going to push for a temporary restraining order after the governor signs the bill. A previously-passed ban was blocked by the state Supreme Court.

The sweeping abortion ban prohibits after 6-weeks, and claims to have a rape and incest exception up until 12-weeks. You know how I feel about exceptions—they’re not real. And in this bill’s case, the language makes clear that it’s extremely unlikely that a victim would get care. For example, doctors performing an abortion on a sexual assault survivor would be mandated by the law to tell their patients that they’re reporting the rape or incest allegation to the sheriff. It’s a way to scare her off having an abortion, plain and simple.

Doctors who perform abortion could face fines, civil suits, and felony criminal charges that could put them in prison for two years.

The bill also requires child support payments from the moment of conception, which isn’t an interest in helping pregnant women as much as it is an opportunity to try to enshrine personhood in the state’s law.

Like so many abortion bans, the medical exceptions in the bill are particularly cruel. For example, if a woman needs an abortion to save her life and the fetus still has a heartbeat, the bill states that the doctor “must make all reasonable efforts to deliver and save the life of an unborn child during the process of separating the unborn child from the pregnant woman, to the extent that it does not adversely affect the life or physical health of the pregnant woman.”

The mandate that doctors “separate” a woman from her pregnancy—rather than give her a standard abortion—means that women will be forced to go into labor or have c-sections, even when doing so will be much more physically and emotionally onerous. (Note that the mental health of a woman is not cited in the language above.)

And, as is the case in other bans, the law specifies that mental health cannot be considered a medical emergency even if a doctor diagnoses a woman as suicidal. It’s telling: Legislators are admitting that they know women will want to take their lives as a result of being forced to carry pregnancies to term, and that they don’t care.

It’s a nightmare.

North Carolina passed an abortion ban last week, and Florida’s ban is expected to go into effect this summer. That means if South Carolina’s ban passes muster with the state Supreme Court, abortion access will be all but completely eradicated in the South.

I’m so sorry, South Carolina. I’m sorry for all of us.