South Carolina GOP bill would allow death penalty as punishment for abortions: report

A proposed South Carolina bill would extend homicide laws – including the death penalty – to cases of abortion.

The "South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act" was pre-filed in the South Carolina Legislature last week by an ultra-conservative group of Republican lawmakers, HuffPost reported Thursday.

The bill seeks to amend the state’s criminal laws by broadening the definition of a “person” to include “an unborn child at any stage of development,” according to a summary of the bill. It would enforce the same laws in place, with limited exceptions, equivalent to killing somebody under state law.

But while the bill will make its way to the judiciary committee when the Legislature convenes next month, it is unlikely to become law, according to the HuffPost report.

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"If passed, this bill would effectively enact a total abortion ban because it considers all abortion, starting 'from the moment of fertilization,' to be homicide," the report said.

South Carolina already has a strict six-week abortion ban in place.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican State Rep. Rob Harris, ignited a national firestorm last year when he introduced the same legislation. The backlash caused several Republican co-sponsors to withdraw support before it failed to move forward in the state House, according to HuffPost.

“It’s very unlikely that the bill will go anywhere this time around,” the publication said. “The current version has six co-sponsors, including Harris, all of whom are white men and members of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus, part of the more extreme sector of the Republican Party.”

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic’s director of public affairs Vicki Ringer told HuffPost she thinks the bill will be “dead on arrival.”

“I think the majority of people, even the most strident Republicans, would say the death penalty bill is not where we want to go with abortion,” Ringer told the publication. She added: “I don’t know who is getting equal protection, but it appears in South Carolina that only fetuses and embryos get equal protection. Women and trans people do not.”