COLUMBIA, S.C. — A proposal that would ban abortions past around six weeks of pregnancy and only offer limited and more narrow exceptions is back in the hands of the South Carolina House.
Some House Republicans are already expressing their displeasure with the amended bill, possibly setting up yet another battle within the chamber and across the lobby with the Senate, where Republicans last week failed to pass a more restrictive ban.
The House in August passed a proposal that would ban nearly all abortions in South Carolina, only allowing exceptions for the mother’s life and in cases where the pregnancy resulted from a sexual assault, but only up until 12 weeks of pregnancy. But senators then failed to pass a more restrictive ban, sending the House an amended bill that reset the ban to six weeks.
The House is scheduled to return to Columbia Sept. 27 to debate the changes made by the Senate.
“All options are on the table,” House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, told reporters Monday when asked whether the House will agree to the Senate’s changes. “I was disappointed with the bill. ... I understand each body has a different makeup and each body has the ability to put their imprint on the bill, and certainly I respect the Senate as a body and their votes. Obviously, the House is vastly differently from their position, but that’s the legislative process.”
House Majority Leader Davey Hiott, R-Pickens, agreed.
“I don’t think that moved the needle at all when it comes to the pro-life community,” Hiott said.
Without enough support to ban nearly all abortions and with Republicans unable to break a filibuster by one of their own, the Senate on Sept. 8 advanced H. 5399 but amended it to keep the procedure banned past six weeks, or once fetal cardiac activity is detected, but adding more narrow exceptions.
Lawmakers passed a six-week ban in 2021. The South Carolina Supreme Court has suspended the law to consider whether it violates privacy rights.
The legislation now being debated in the State House would allow doctors to perform an abortion if the pregnant woman’s life is at risk or if the pregnancy creates a “substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” It also makes an exception if a woman becomes pregnant due to rape or incest, but limits the procedure to the first trimester, or 12 weeks, not the 20 weeks allowed in the six-week ban.
The abortion must be reported to a county sheriff no later than 24 hours after the procedure and the doctor must take a DNA sample from the aborted fetus.
Doctors also could perform an abortion if the fetus is unable to survive outside the mother’s womb. But the legislation requires that the anomaly be confirmed by two doctors — an addition made by the Senate.
“This amended version does not advance the cause of life in SC and I cannot concur with a bill that does nothing,” Rep. John McCravy, a Greenwood Republican who chairs the conservative Family Caucus, said in a statement provided to the Associated Press. “We were not called back to pass a bill we already have—we were called to re-write the laws of our state after the (U.S. Supreme Court’s) Dobbs decision.”
There is typically little fanfare if either chamber decides to agree or not with the other’s legislative changes.
If the House agrees, the bill heads to the governor’s desk for his signature. If they don’t, the bill goes to a committee, where three House members and three senators will be tasked with reaching a compromise for both chambers.
But the abortion debate has highlighted a serious split within the House and Senate Republican membership, who control both chambers but have been unable to agree on how restrictive an abortion ban should be.
Speaking for the House Freedom Caucus, chairman and Rep. Adam Morgan, R-Greenville, said Monday that the caucus is not interested in going “backwards to life pre-Roe’s reversal” but said it’s yet to be determined how the bloc of conservative legislators will vote when the House returns to Columbia.
But Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey repeated there’s little space left for senators to move.
“It is very clear to me that the votes are not there in the Senate to be more aggressive than what we passed,” Massey, R-Edgefield, said. “If we’d had an opportunity to be more aggressive, we would’ve been.”
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Reporter Joseph Bustos contributed to this report.
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