A restrictive abortion bill that would ban abortion at conception and remove nearly all of the exceptions allowed under the state's current six-week law failed to win enough support on Wednesday to move to the full Senate Medical Affairs Committee.
All three Democrats on the Senate Medical Affairs subcommittee opposed giving S. 323 a favorable report.
Only two Republicans — the bill's author, Sen. Richard Cash of Anderson and Sen. Tom Fernandez of Dorchester — voted in favor of moving the bill to the full Medical Affairs Committee.
The remaining four Republicans abstained.
Cash's bill began losing GOP support early in Wednesday's debate.
First, in a strategic move, the three Democrats joined two of six of the Republicans to keep a measure in the bill that critics fear could imprison women for up to 30 years if they violate the law.
"Clearly there's some division about whether this bill really has enough votes to move forward or not," Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, an Orangeburg Democrat who sits on the subcommittee, told reporters after the vote. "Our position was the bill was bad, you can't make something bad better by voting for things, so we just voted against everything knowing we were going to vote against the bill because we believe that it's an attack on women, it's an attack on doctors, and we were going to have no part of it."
The measure has split some of the state’s anti-abortion groups and Senate Republicans like Upstate Sen. Billy Garrett, an attorney, who said punishing the mother would "be a bridge too far" for him.
"I'm extremely in favor of saving babies lives," Garrett said. "But I have never intended, ... nor should any of us, intend to punish or be punitive toward our moms."
Cash, who also served as the panel’s chair, opposed removing the language.
The subcommittee met in October to take public testimony.
Cash scheduled the second hearing on Wednesday, he said, to respond to concerns that many in opposition had to the bill.
That included assuaging concerns that the bill would ban contraception, which, Cash said, he did not believe his original legislation did.
But Cash was adamant that criminal and civil liability measures, plus a provision that other Republicans feared would regulate free speech, stay in the bill.
"If it's adopted (an amendment to remove the criminal and civil liabilities for the mother) ... it will gut the bill," Cash told his colleagues. "That's the glaring inconsistency of our law in its current state, is that, somehow, the unborn child has no legal status of protection from his or her own mother."
The Democrats did not offer any changes.
And, outside of Cash's amendment to "clean up" language, no other Republican-sponsored amendment succeeded.
That included a proposal to lessen the criminal liability, by slapping up to two years in prison or a $1,000 fine unless the pregnant woman testified against the abortion provider for immunity.
Another proposal to reinstate rape and incest exceptions, allowed under the state's current abortion law, was carried over.
State Sen. Jeff Zell, who proposed the change, said he could not support the legislation if all exceptions beyond to save a mother's life were removed and if the criminalization piece stayed in place.
"I think I just flashed my cards a little bit," the Sumter Republican said.
Whether the legislation has even enough support to pass the Senate chamber or make its way to the governor’s desk remains in question.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, told reporters earlier this month that there’s been no conversation as of yet as to whether the bill will get a debate next year.
"I can say this definitively, there has been not only no decision made to bring up that bill, there has been no discussion about bringing up that bill," Massey said.
And Gov. Henry McMaster, who signed the so-called "heartbeat ban" bill into law, has repeatedly called the six-week abortion ban a good law, saying it has the support of most South Carolinians.
