This week, South Carolina lawmakers advanced legislation that would replace the state's six-week heartbeat law with a near-total ban on a woman's reproductive freedom, eliminating existing exceptions for rape, incest, and fatal fetal anomalies, and potentially criminalizing both doctors and patients. The next representative of South Carolina's 1st Congressional District will cast votes that directly affect whether federal protections for a woman's right to choose survive. That makes the question of where each candidate stands not just relevant, but essential.
Nancy Lacore has not answered that question. Not clearly. Not on the record.
When a voter at a recent Democratic candidate forum raised the issue of a woman's right to choose, Lacore did not say she supported it. According to The Bulwark, she mentioned her Catholic faith and said personal beliefs on the matter should not be imposed on others, but refused to say she supports a woman’s right to choose. The reporter who witnessed the exchange wrote that Lacore clearly felt uneasy wading into thornier partisan issues and that “it didn’t always seem like she was thrilled to be running as a Democrat.”
"Nancy Lacore cannot tell us when she became a Democrat, cannot tell us why, and will not say on the record that she is comfortable being one. And now she will not give a straight answer on a woman's right to choose at a moment when South Carolina lawmakers are moving to put doctors in prison for providing care. The Lowcountry cannot afford that kind of ambiguity in Congress," said the Deford for Congress campaign manager, John Cassibry.
When a reporter asked her directly whether it felt odd to adopt a party label after so many years of eschewing partisan politics, Lacore asked to go off the record to answer honestly.
What makes this pattern all the more troubling is that Lacore's campaign, or a dark money group aligned with her, is currently running push polls in the district, falsely claiming that Mac Deford does not support a woman's right to choose.
In 2023, when Deford first ran for this seat, he wrote a personal op-ed in the Charleston City Paper about a family tragedy that shaped his lifelong belief in a woman's right to choose. He wrote about his grandmother, who died in pre-Roe America after an unsafe procedure, a loss that made clear to him that when politicians take away a woman's freedom to choose, real families pay the price.
"My position has never changed, and it has never been complicated. I support a woman's right to choose, and I oppose government overreach in the exam room. These are deeply personal decisions that belong to patients, their families, and their doctors, not politicians. That was true when I wrote about my grandmother in 2023, and it is true today," said Deford.
The question of who is prepared to represent this district goes beyond any single issue. Lacore has acknowledged that she does not have deep roots in SC-01 and that it was not her primary residence until a few months ago. When asked by The Bulwark why she chose to retire here, she said she feels drawn to the water and that talking about protecting the coast resonates with everybody.
"The Lowcountry deserves a representative who has been here, who knows this community, and who has never needed to be asked twice where they stand. That is Mac Deford," said Cassibry.
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