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President-elect Donald Trump made a calculated decision to move the Republican party away from the pro-life position during the 2024 presidential election… a move which paid electoral dividends for the GOP.
Trump fared better with female voters in this year’s race than he did in either the 2016 or 2020 elections, according to exit polling from the left-leaning Associated Press. Also, Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate and retained control of the U.S. House – victories which were aided in part by a relaxed stance on this hottest of hot-button issues.
In South Carolina – where state law governing abortions was ostensibly settled last year – a group of conservative organizations is chiding ranking Republicans in the S.C. House for failing to make the issue a priority heading into the 2025-2026 legislative session.
“House Republicans in South Carolina are turning their backs on babies in the womb,” a statement (.pdf) from six Palmetto State pro-life groups noted. “House Republican leadership’s refusal to take up the abortion issue as a priority is an affront to the principles of the South Carolina Republican party platform.”
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The latest iteration of the SCGOP platform (.pdf) holds that “the right to life is the first inalienable right, without which there can be no other rights.” It further states “all human life has intrinsic worth and should be legally protected at all stages,” and that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “applies to unborn children who should be classified as legal persons not as legal property.”
According to the pro-life lobby, “House Republican leadership is abdicating its responsibility before God to secure the ‘first inalienable right’ for all people in our state.”
Their goal? Passage of a total abortion ban – which would obviously be a step further than the six-week ban passed last year (and upheld by the S.C. supreme court last August).
Equal Protection South Carolina, Personhood SC, Love Life Greenville, United Patriots Alliance Action, Coastline Women’s Center and Spartanburg Christian Action Network jointly signed the statement – as did five members of the S.C. Freedom Caucus, including its new chairman, Jordan Pace.
Notably absent from its list of signatories? S.C. Citizens for Life, the Palmetto State’s largest and most well-known pro-life organization.
By way of warning, the statement cited the defeat of three GOP state senators – Penry Gustafson, Sandy Senn and Katrina Shealy – in the 2024 Republican primaries in June as evidence of voters’ views on the matter. According to the statement, these three lawmakers “were decisively defeated precisely because they refused to support banning the barbaric act of abortion in our state.”
“Republican primary voters delivered a clear message,” the statement noted. “They want to abolish abortion in South Carolina and they gave their elected representatives a resounding mandate to do it.”
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The authority of states to regulate abortion was firmly established in the aftermath of the U.S. supreme court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which had maintained a national right to abortion for the last half century. The overturning of Roe effectively legalized state abortion bans including the so-called “heartbeat bill” – which outlawed a majority of abortions in the Palmetto State once a fetal heartbeat had been detected.
In January of 2023, however, the state court struck down the heartbeat bill – specifically the six-week requirement of the law – on the grounds it violated protections of the S.C. Constitution (Article I, Section 10). The court’s 3-2 decision to overturn the heartbeat bill sent lawmakers back to the drawing board, and in May of 2023 they passed a second version of the 2021 ban – Act No. 70 of 2023. This bill was specifically crafted in response to concerns raised by the court – notably concerns raised by associate justice John Few.
The revised legislation was upheld by a 4-1 majority.
Lawmakers declined to revisit the abortion battle in 2024, and legislative leaders clearly do not seem eager to revisit it in 2025. However, pressure from pro-life – and pro-choice – advocates could force their hand. On the pro-choice side of the ledger, soon-to-be-sophomore state representative Heather Bauer campaigned on repealing the six-week ban – and told this media outlet not long after the supreme court ruling that the issue was “far from settled.”
Expect Bauer and her Democrat allies to introduce legislation ahead of the upcoming legislative session which would take direct aim at the state’s existing abortion law.
Meanwhile, expect conservatives to aggressively target S.C. speaker Murrell Smith. In addition to declining to prioritize abortion on the House agenda, the powerful lawyer-legislator is also reportedly taking heat (again) for his prior legal representation of an abortion provider in a graphic 2016 case out of Sumter, S.C.
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THE STATEMENT…
(Provided)
BANNER: Travis Bell Columbia SC Photographers
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and seven children.
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