SPECTRUM NEWS

At the South Carolina State House just hours before the start of the 2026 legislative session, State Rep. Rob Harris, R-Spartanburg, and State Sen. Lee Bright, R-Spartanburg, spoke about abortion legislation they each plan to sponsor.

The new legislation aims to go a step further than the current “Fetal Heartbeat” law, which prohibits abortions after a heartbeat in the fetus is detected, which happens at around six-weeks.

YAHOO NEWS

South Carolina Senator Lee Bright and State Representative Rob Harris are filing legislation that would make abortion illegal in South Carolina.

The South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act would charge all parties involved in an abortion, including the pregnant mother and doctor, with murder.

WYFF

Tuesday morning started with press conferences from some groups, including the family caucus and anti-abortion activists promoting House Bill 3537 that extends life protections to the moment of conception.

“Clearly, life begins at conception, and should be protected from that point on. In 2023, the legislature and governor revised the heartbeat law, which simply regulates abortion and makes it legal to kill certain pre-born persons. Incredibly, in one section of that bill, it asserts that life is at conception, but in another section, it writes into law where, when, and how someone may legally murder a baby,” said Rep. Rob Harris, R-Spartanburg.

FOX CAROLINA

A pair of South Carolina lawmakers say they’re working to further outlaw abortion in the state. State Sen. Lee Bright and state Rep. Bob Harris held a press conference Tuesday, the first day the South Carolina General Assembly reconvenes in Columbia.

Rep. Rob Harris, R-Spartanburg, said the measure reflects his belief that life begins at conception. “Clearly life begins at conception and should be protected from that point on,” Harris said. “In 2023, the legislature and governor raised the heartbeat law, which simply regulates abortion.”

THE STATE

South Carolina Senator Lee Bright and State Representative Rob Harris are filing legislation that would make abortion illegal in South Carolina.

The South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act would charge all parties involved in an abortion, including the pregnant mother and doctor, with murder.

FOX NEWS

The Prenatal Equal Protection Act, introduced in the South Carolina House of Representatives, would be the strongest anti-abortion law in state history if enacted. The legislation has been scheduled for a hearing in the South Carolina House Constitutional Laws Subcommittee on Wednesday.

“These children deserve equal protection. I will be filing a bill of equal protection today. I know we’ve got hearts and minds to change,” Bright said Tuesday at a press conference at the South Carolina State House.

KFF HEALTH NEWS

Until recently, the idea of charging women who obtain abortions with a crime was considered “politically toxic,” said Steven Greene, a political science professor at North Carolina State University.

Yet at least 15 states introduced “abortion as homicide” bills during 2024-2025 legislative sessions, many of which included the death penalty as a potential sentence, according to Dana Sussman, senior vice president of Pregnancy Justice, an organization that tracks the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes.

ABC COLUMBIA

State lawmakers plan to introduce new legislation on abortion this session. State Senator Lee Bright and State Representative Rob Harris will make the announcement tomorrow, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026.

According to current state law, abortion is banned after six weeks of pregnancy. Senator Bright says in spite of the ban more than six thousand abortions are performed in the state each year.

THE BLAZE

Kentucky’s leading pro-life advocacy organization, Kentucky Right to Life, has long supported laws that shield women from criminal liability for abortion. In practice, this ensures that abortion remains legal for women, even if clinics are closed.

Addia Wuchner, Kentucky Right to Life’s executive director, opposed an abolition bill in 2023 on the grounds that it might expose mothers to criminal charges. She took the same position last year, arguing that women are victims of coercion by the abortion industry.

THE FROGCAST

It was an honor to have Bradley Pierce on the show. Bradley is the co-founder of Heritage Defense, one of the board members at the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, and a prominent Christian attorney.

PREGNANCY HELP NEWS

Pierce said that unborn babies should receive the same protection that any other human being receives under the law. 

“We need equal protection of the laws for preborn babies, meaning that the same homicide laws protecting the lives of born people are extended to protect preborn people as well,” he said. “Without this standard, preborn image-bearers of God will remain unprotected, even in the most conservative states in our country.”

THE DAILY WIRE

At the state level, some Republican lawmakers from Georgia to North Dakota to Missouri introduced “equal protection” bills in 2025 that would criminalize abortion not only for the abortionist, but anyone involved in the abortion, including the mother. They believe that these kinds of bills would be more effective at eliminating abortion and provide equal protection to unborn babies. 

“Many red states with so-called abortion bans are seeing higher abortion levels because their bans are no bans at all,” Bradley Pierce, a constitutional lawyer and president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, told The Daily Wire.

THE BLAZE

Some pro-life organizations are self-admittedly non-sectarian, seeking to build coalitions of anti-abortion people who may be Christians, other religious conservatives, agnostics and atheists, or feminists.

But even the pro-life groups that are convictionally Christian, or led by convictional Christians, often functionally set aside the Christian worldview.

THE BLAZE

When brick-and-mortar abortion facilities shut their doors in conservative states that passed new abortion regulations, the abortion landscape quickly adapted to the shifting legal environment. More men and women who want to murder their preborn babies are turning to abortion pills and other methods of self-induced abortion.

While many conservative states passed new abortion regulations after Roe was overturned, those laws have massive loopholes that allow for abortion pills. They may ban third-party abortion providers from assisting women with abortions, but they explicitly protect the act of a woman having a self-induced abortion, ensuring that telehealth abortions enabled by shield laws continue with no reliable deterrents.

THE WESTERN JOURNAL

South Carolina parents who want to murder their preborn babies are protected through six weeks of gestation, with permissive standards for babies conceived in rape or incest through the entire first trimester. There are also loopholes in pro-life laws enabling any woman who willfully murders her preborn baby in South Carolina to be protected from all prosecution.

Beyond rapid increases in abortion pill orders, there are still multiple functioning abortion facilities across South Carolina, meaning that preborn babies made in the image of God continue to be murdered under the protection of pro-life regulations.

NEWS-PRESS NOW

Missouri State Sen. Mike Moon and Missouri State Rep. Burt Whaley announced the filing Monday of separate bills, called the Missouri Prenatal Equal Protection Act, designed to completely abolish abortion in the state.

The legislation would recognize the abortion amendment passed by voters in 2024 as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, making it a criminal offense of murder for those engaged in the procedure.

KCTV

The Foundation to Abolish Abortion, which supports the legislation, claims the 2024 amendment violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause as it denies legal protections to fetuses. Under the proposed law, anyone who performs, assists with, or receives an abortion could face charges: the same penalties that apply to homicide cases involving born individuals.

“We have a duty as lawmakers to abolish abortion,” Sen. Moon said. “The abortion amendment in the Missouri Constitution is not a valid excuse for inaction or delay.”

ABORTION EVERY DAY

Missouri Republicans have introduced legislation that would punish abortion patients as murderers, putting them at risk of life in prison or the death penalty. The Missouri Prenatal Equal Protection Act, introduced by Sen. Mike Moon and Rep. Burt Whaley, would also amend the definition of “human being” in the state’s criminal code to include fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses.

But the recent explosion of such legislation tells a different story: lawmakers in over a dozen states introduced “equal protection” bills last year, lobbied by so-called abortion abolitionists. The Texas GOP even wrote “equal protection” into its official platform. Just as bad, the culture is moving right along with the politics. The Overton Window is shifting in real time. Which is why we need to raise the alarm every single time these bills appear.

SLATE

The abolitionists don’t just have soft targets; they also have a sophisticated legal organization, led by Bradley Pierce, an experienced lawyer who has written abolitionist model legislation, and who has worked with the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is now the nation’s leading anti-abortion litigator. Pierce’s model laws are ready-made solutions for men like Cash who want to push colleagues further toward even more extreme anti-abortion views.

Pierce’s cause also has an army in Southern Baptist churches, which are pushing for an endorsement of abolitionism in the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC hasn’t gone that far, but it has passed resolutions replete with abolitionist language, and abolitionist allies continue to press for more.

MOTHER JONES

Abortion abolitionists have backed Cash’s bill while also complaining it doesn’t go far enough. “Senate Bill 323 still falls short of equal protection,” the Foundation to Abolish Abortion said in a legislative analysis on its website. “The prison sentences prescribed by the bill are weaker than existing penalties in South Carolina for the murder of born people.” In other words, the death penalty.

As my colleague Kiera Butler wrote earlier this year, the once-fringe abolitionist movement, dominated by militant Christian men, including a group that has become known as “TheoBros,” has been on the rise since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022.