On Wednesday, South Carolina made headway with a major victory for life as the state Senate passed a piece of legislation that would ban all abortions in the state. Barely 24 hours after a similar proposal was defeated, the Senate vote 28-10 to approve the measure.
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The measure would amend a bill to ban abortion at every stage of pregnancy, except for in rare cases like rape, incest or if the mother’s life is in danger.
The 28-10 vote now needs a second vote of approval before it will be voted on by the state House in South Carolina. It is expected to pass the second round of votes.
It is also expected that abortion activists and organizations like Planned Parenthood will fight back if the bill passes through the entire legislation successfully.
Senate lawmakers stated that if the bill does pass, it would give the court system the chance to revisit Roe v. Wade, the case that legalized abortion and set precedent for all future cases.
“It’s designed to give the court an opportunity to revisit Roe v. Wade,” state Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey told The State newspaper.
The report stated:
The proposal likely would ban some 97 percent of the roughly 5,700 abortions performed in South Carolina each year, according to the Democrat who suggested Republicans adopt it.
“It’s clearly unconstitutional from my point of view,” said state Sen. Brad Hutto. The Orangeburg Democrat said he filed the proposal in order to quickly end a debate over “dismemberment” abortions that had raged in the Senate for two days until late Wednesday.
The Senate passed the bill less than an hour after Hutto’s amendment was adopted. It needs one more vote on Wednesday, and Republicans expect their Democratic counterparts to filibuster the amended proposal.
After the vote, Hutto said, S.C. lawmakers can get to other important issues, such as South Carolina’s $9 billion nuclear fiasco. He said he is confident the courts would strike down the proposed abortion ban, if it passes the Senate and then the House.
Earlier this week, the Senate voted on another amendment to the abortion ban, which would have given babies legal and independent rights from the moment they were conceived. This amendment was stuck down.
Although the passing of the bill would be a win for life, it is unlikely that the bill would be able to change things on a nationwide scale. Before the legislation could have a chance of being upheld, President Trump would have to appoint another pro-life judge to the U.S. Supreme Court. Unfortunately, only four of the nine justices that currently sit on the Supreme Court would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Recently, other states have also passed bills that have outlawed abortion in the first trimester, but these were reversed by federal courts. North Dakota and Arkansas both saw this happen in recent years.
The case from North Dakota made it to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which shot it down. The Eighth Circuit said this about their reversal ruling on the six-week ban:
“Because there is no genuine dispute that (North Dakota’s law) generally prohibits abortions before viability — as the Supreme Court has defined that concept — and because we are bound by Supreme Court precedent holding that states may not prohibit pre-viability abortions, we must affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the plaintiffs.”
But with recent victories in states like South Carolina and Iowa, the future of the pro-life effort in America is looking more promising.
(H/T: The State)