Republican lawmakers in South Carolina have reintroduced legislation that would make abortion at any stage of pregnancy equivalent to murder under state law, meaning that a person who obtains the procedure could potentially face the death penalty for doing so.
The South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act, which was introduced originally in 2023 but dropped from consideration in early 2024, has been refiled by State Rep. Rob Harris (R). The bill has seven other Republican co-sponsors, and is set to be considered by the state House Judiciary Committee early next year.
The bill defines fetuses and embryos at any stage of pregnancy as legal persons, thus defining any type of abortion — including those that happen before the state’s six-week abortion ban — as homicide, effectively creating a total abortion ban. Although the legislation’s language makes exceptions for cases where a person’s life is endangered due to their pregnancy or a miscarriage, critics of the original bill noted that the proposal requires a person to prove their own innocence in such cases, meaning that even those who meet the exception criteria could be subjected to criminal punishment.
Notably, exceptions for miscarriages or to save the life of a pregnant person are rarely granted, as these kinds of laws generally have ambiguous language regarding exceptions, leaving health professionals unsure of when a situation qualifies. The latest iteration of this bill’s life exception also requires “reasonable steps” to be taken before a life-saving abortion can occur, likely resulting in lengthier delays to such care, including in cases where immediate action is necessary to save a person’s life.
The authors of the legislation make no effort to hide their far right religious agenda, referring to life as being “created in the image of God” in the text of the bill in an attempt to justify its passage.
Advocates of abortion rights spoke out against the advancement and passage of the bill, recounting how it was defeated almost a year ago and how the legislation — sponsored by members of the state legislature’s Freedom Caucus — is a hypocritical stripping of people’s freedoms.
“We can never become so immune to the dangerous and ridiculous antics of SC’s House Freedom Caucus that we simply ignore that they have introduced a bill to punish women who obtain abortions with the DEATH PENALTY,” Vicki Ringer, director of public affairs at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, posted on Bluesky. “And they call themselves ‘pro-life.'”
“In South Carolina, our far-right ‘Freedom’ Caucus is full of abortion abolitionists that want to execute women that have abortions,” wrote Emily Taylor, professor of world literature and women’s and gender studies at Presbyterian College. “It’s not enough for them that women are already dying because of maternal healthcare deserts in our state and our horrific ban.”
And in her daily newsletter Abortion, Every Day, journalist Jessica Valenti wrote that South Carolina Republicans, in introducing this bill once more, “have demonstrated again and again that they believe women’s lives are expendable — worthless, really, if not for our reproductive ability.”
“Yet we’re expected to sit here and react to that violence as if it’s simply politics,” Valenti continued. “As if it’s perfectly fine that our suffering and deaths are being debated in statehouses and courtrooms as if we’re not human beings, but thought exercises and legal arguments.”
While South Carolina Republicans appear to be fixated on criminalizing abortion, their “pro-life” beliefs don’t seem to extend to after birth, as the infant mortality rate in the Palmetto State is 7.3 deaths for every 1,000 live births. That rate is much higher than the U.S. average of 5.6 deaths per 1,000 births, and nearly two times higher than the average rate in OECD countries.
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