Why South Carolina Must Not Pass Another Useless Abortion Regulation
H. 4760 Must Not Be Passed
Members of the South Carolina House Constitutional Laws Subcommittee are scheduled to hear testimony on Wednesday, January 14, about H. 4760 and H. 3537. The two anti-abortion bills, respectively filed by South Carolina State Representative Weston Newton and South Carolina State Representative Rob Harris, mark two distinct approaches to opposing abortion.
H. 3537 would establish equal protection of the laws for preborn babies and abolish abortion in South Carolina. H. 4760 would merely seek to regulate the ordering of abortion-inducing drugs.
The Foundation to Abolish Abortion strongly recommends against passing H. 4760, which would exempt women who willfully have abortions from penalties, fail to prevent the flow of abortion pills into the state, and decline to establish equal protection of the laws for preborn babies.
H. 4760 Exempts Women from Penalties
H. 4760 claims to decrease the flow of abortion-inducing drugs into South Carolina, and yet the bill protects women who take abortion pills from any civil or criminal penalties. The presence of such loopholes means that H. 4760 cannot be expected to substantially decrease abortions.
The bill makes clear that “any act taken or omission by a pregnant woman with regard to her own unborn child,” as well as the possession “for her own consumption or consuming an abortion-inducing drug by a pregnant woman in violation of this section,” shall not be “construed to create the crime of criminal abortion by means of an abortion-inducing drug.”
In other sections, pregnant women who willfully order or use abortion-inducing drugs are protected from civil liability. The bill does not “impose liability” for any “conduct taken by a pregnant woman who aborts or seeks to abort her unborn child,” and blocks civil action “against the woman who used or sought to obtain abortion-inducing drugs to abort or attempt to abort her unborn child.”
H. 4760 would therefore protect abortion in South Carolina by not only failing to address similar loopholes already in state law keeping abortion legal for women, but also by adding even more loopholes into state law.
In the vast majority of abortions, women are not second victims, but are willful participants in the murder of their own preborn babies. This is especially true of self-induced abortions, in which a woman becomes her own abortionist by taking abortion pills herself.
H. 4760 would protect abortion occurring in South Carolina, provided that the mother willfully obtains and performs her own abortion. Rather than protecting preborn image-bearers of God, H. 4760 would ensure that preborn babies remain vulnerable to murder, as long as their mothers are the ones who want to take their lives.
H. 4760 Fails to Prevent Abortions
There are currently thousands of self-induced abortions, in which a pregnant woman orders abortion pills either from shield law states or overseas suppliers, occurring every single year in South Carolina. But neither source of abortion pills would be deterred by H. 4760.
In shield law states, criminal and civil judgments against abortion pill providers are not recognized, meaning that H. 4760 cannot be expected to deter the flow of abortion pills from such states absent a federal court decision.
There may eventually be federal court precedent, or even a decision from the Supreme Court, about shield laws protecting abortion suppliers. But such a decision could be many years away, meaning that preborn babies will continue to be legally murdered in the meantime.
In the case that H. 4760 would eventually deter domestic abortion pill suppliers, there are still established supply chains of abortion pills from foreign countries. In the months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, women started to order and receive abortion pills from India and Europe.
These overseas suppliers not only continue to manufacture and send abortion pills into South Carolina, but would be protected jurisdictionally from the criminal and civil penalties in H. 4760.
Rather than simply prosecuting all parties involved with abortion, H. 4760 would target suppliers who may not ever be held accountable. The bill meanwhile protects women actively performing abortions in South Carolina, who are without question subject to state law. This deliberate failure ensures that H. 4760 would not be able to successfully deter abortions.
H. 4760 Declines to Enact Equal Protection
H. 4760 includes criminal penalties for “any person who knowingly performs an abortion by means of an abortion-inducing drug.” Beyond the exemptions for pregnant women which already make the bill ineffective, H. 4760 devalues the lives of preborn babies by treating their murder with less severity than the murder of born people. The bill therefore fails to enact equal protection and compromises on the principle of impartiality.
When an individual is found guilty of performing an abortion with abortion-inducing drugs under H. 4760, with the exception of pregnant women, that individual must be “imprisoned for not more than five years, or fined not more than fifty thousand dollars, or both.”
The bill also establishes penalties for those who “knowingly and intentionally engage in the use of an abortion-inducing drug on a pregnant woman, without her knowledge or consent, with the intent to cause an abortion.” Such persons “must be imprisoned for not more than ten years, or fined not more than seventy-five thousand dollars, or both.”
The same degree of penalty exists for those who perform an abortion using abortion-inducing drugs “that results in the death or the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function, not including psychological or emotional conditions, of the pregnant woman.” If the woman was under eighteen years old, then guilty parties “must be imprisoned for not more than fifty years, or fined not more than one hundred thousand dollars, or both.”
There are also different penalties imposed depending on the gestational age of the preborn baby. In the section about using abortion-inducing drugs on a pregnant woman without her knowledge or consent, there are heightened penalties “if the unborn child is more than three months of gestational age.” In such cases, the individual is “guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, must be imprisoned for not more than twenty years, or fined not more than one hundred thousand dollars, or both.”
H. 4760 functionally treats abortion as less than murder, and preborn image-bearers of God as less than human, by failing to prescribe equal penalties in the case of their murder.
When a born person is murdered in the state of South Carolina, the guilty party must receive a penalty of thirty years to life imprisonment and could receive capital punishment. These protections are stronger than any of the penalties in H. 4760, meaning that the bill treats preborn babies as subhumans who are less worthy of protection than born persons.
The bill also discriminates against younger preborn babies by imposing harsher penalties only for those older than three months of gestational age, provided that their mothers were given abortion-inducing drugs without their knowledge or consent. This further violates the principle of impartiality, providing different degrees of penalty based on factors other than the innate value of all humans as image-bearers of God.
H. 3537 Must Be Passed
The Foundation to Abolish Abortion strongly recommends in favor of passing H. 3537, which would establish equal protection of the laws for preborn babies while ensuring that murdering anyone is illegal for everyone.
H. 3537 would apply the existing justice system to prenatal homicide instead of granting immunity to women who willfully have abortions. If a woman is suspected of having an abortion, she would be subject to the same due process and presumption of innocence as any other suspected murderer. Rather than exempting all women who have abortions from any criminal or civil penalties, H. 3537 would ensure that women who willfully obtain abortions can be held accountable, preemptively deterring the vast majority of abortions.
H. 3537 would deal with the legalized flow of abortion pills into South Carolina by prohibiting their use, which would greatly decrease the overall flow of abortion pills. H. 3537 would deter both the supply and demand of abortion, ensuring that all parties willfully ordering abortion pills into South Carolina can face penalties under the law.
H. 3537 would also treat all people as image-bearers of God instead of applying different penalties detached from their innate value. If the murder of a preborn baby takes place, the same penalty range that applies in the case of the murder of a born person would be employed. Rather than penalizing guilty parties differently and exempting women who willfully have abortions, H. 3537 would apply the existing state laws that already protect born people to protect preborn people as well, treating all image-bearers of God as equally valuable.
Members of the South Carolina House Constitutional Laws Subcommittee must recognize that H. 3537 is the only bill in the South Carolina House with the capacity to abolish abortion. They must honor God by advancing H. 3537 and opposing unjust and ineffective alternatives.