COLUMBIA, S.C. _ A panel of South Carolina lawmakers on Tuesday advanced a bill that would ban nearly all abortions in South Carolina, after hearing competing pleas from pastors, women's rights advocates, pregnancy counselors, parents and doctors.
The GOP-backed legislation would outlaw abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, typically around the sixth week of pregnancy. Six weeks is before some women know they are pregnant and long before the fetus can survive outside the womb.
"It goes too far inserting government into our personal and private lives, and impeding decision that should be made between a woman and her doctor," Columbia resident Maxine Todd testified before lawmakers.
"I have seen, I have heard that beating heart at six weeks," Alexia Newman with the Carolina Pregnancy Center in Spartanburg countered in testimony to lawmakers Tuesday. "Because that heart is beating, those babies deserve protection under the law," she said.
Tuesday's hearing represented the first real abortion debate of the year in the South Carolina State House. It comes days after neighboring Georgia passed its own "fetal heartbeat" abortion ban and nearly a year after Democrats in the South Carolina Senate filibustered to death a proposal to outlaw virtually all abortions in South Carolina.
However, such bans so far have been blocked by judges or ruled unconstitutional.
A House panel advanced the bill _ the first of several steps before it can become law _ by a 3-2 vote that split along party lines Tuesday morning. It was set to be debated by the full House Judiciary Committee Tuesday afternoon, even as House Democrats on the committee pledged to prolong debate on the bill with hundreds of proposed amendments.
The proposal's supporters say a fetal heartbeat is a crucial indicator that a fetus will make it to birth. According to the bill, the state has "legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of an unborn human individual who may be born."
Meanwhile, opponents said the bill would harm women as they try to make decisions about their health care.
Obstetricians and gynecologists told lawmakers the bill would negatively impact women's health care in the state, while others, including Vicki Ringer of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said it will lead to a costly legal fight the state will lose.
Ann Warner, CEO of the Women's Rights and Empowerment Network, testified that women have the ability to make their own intellectual and moral decisions about their health care, calling the consequences of the bill "insidious and far-reaching."
The bill, if it becomes law, would effectively ban abortions in South Carolina starting at around the sixth week of pregnancy. Current state law prohibits abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy and later. That law was passed in 2016 as part of ongoing efforts among conservative lawmakers to restrict women's access to abortion.
The "fetal heartbeat" abortion ban would make an exception to save the mother's life or when the procedure is deemed necessary to avert serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical harm. However, the bill does not include an exception for severe fetal anomalies that would lead to death after birth. Those anomalies often develop later in the pregnancy. The bill also does not make an exception for rape or incest.
Dr. Ashley Navaro, a resident physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, told lawmakers of a 35-year-old woman who came into her clinic eight weeks pregnant after having been raped by her husband.
"She told me she had four children at home, three of which had seizure disorders that required multiple hospital admissions," Navaro testified. "I told her, unfortunately, at this time she could not have an elective termination at this hospital. She looked at me and gasped. 'This is not elective. I was raped.' I had to continue to tell her for her to have an abortion she had to go through the appropriate legal channels. To which she replied, 'I can't do that, because he will kill me. Or, if he doesn't, his family will.'
"A six-week ban would essentially cost this woman and her children more than we can understand," Navaro said. "A bill that imposes more barriers to (abortion) access do not account for situations like these and are not similarly defined. This is not a black-and-white situation."
Any physician who violates the bill's provisions would be charged with a felony, punishable by a $10,000 fine or up to two years in prison, or both.
Tuesday morning's vote appears to be an effort to push the bill to the House floor and keep the issue alive this year. Bills that don't pass the House or the Senate before April 10 "crossover deadline" face a much more difficult road to passage this year.
Democratic Reps. Mandy Powers Norrell of Lancaster County and Will Wheeler of Lee County voted against advancing the bill.
And state Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg, said Monday he's determined to thwart the bill from advancing in the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday afternoon.
Several states have signed into law similar fetal heartbeat bills, including Mississippi, Kentucky and Iowa. Georgia lawmakers on Friday passed a fetal heartbeat ban that is expected to be signed into law by the state's Republican governor. And Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas are expected to approve similar measures this year, according to The New York Times.
The measures, however, have been blocked by the courts, with judges in Iowa, Kentucky and North Dakota halting the bills from taking effect or declaring them unconstitutional.
Additionally, last week, North Carolina U.S. District Court Judge William Osteen struck down a North Carolina ban on abortions starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy, saying the law is unconstitutional.
Osteen wrote that the Supreme Court has protected abortion as a constitutional right until a fetus can live outside the mother's womb, typically around the 22nd to 24th week of gestation.
The South Carolina bill is one of many Republicans in the State House have introduced to chip away at abortion access in recent years.
Efforts to pass a fetal heartbeat law in South Carolina have failed in the past, with most failing to reach the House or Senate floor for a vote.
Anti-abortion lawmakers, however, have said they feel emboldened by judicial appointments under President Donald Trump _ including the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh _ to pass a law that could spark a court challenge to overturn Roe v. Wade. The 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision affirmed a woman's right to an abortion.
More than 250 bill restricting abortion have been filed in 41 states this year, according to Planned Parenthood. Compared to this point in 2018, there has been a 62.5 percent increase in the number of six-week abortion bans introduced, according to the family planning services and abortion provider.
A majority of South Carolinians say women should be able to have an abortion in certain cases, according to the latest Winthrop University poll.
