COLUMBIA – South Carolina lawmakers are preparing to ram a dangerous and extreme anti-abortion bill through the legislative process starting Oct. 1 with a specially called Senate subcommittee meeting. The ACLU of South Carolina is joining reproductive rights groups across the state calling on lawmakers to abandon this egregious attack on our autonomy, privacy, speech, and safety.
Senate Bill 323 would create a total abortion ban with almost no exceptions. It would equate abortion with homicide, carrying up to a 30-year prison sentence, and it would make it a felony to provide information about obtaining an abortion via the phone or internet.
S. 323 has been scheduled for a hearing before the Senate Medical Affairs Subcommittee on October 1 starting at 9:30 a.m. in Room 105 of the Gressette Building (1101 Pendleton Street, Columbia). The meeting agenda is available at scstatehouse.gov. Sign-ups for public testimony have not opened yet, but written comments can be sent to smedicomm@scsenate.gov with the bill number in the subject line.
“Senate Bill 323 is unconstitutional and deadly,” said Courtney Thomas, Advocacy Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina. “This bill would criminalize medical care, invade our privacy, and place unconstitutional restrictions on speech, travel, and association. Any lawmaker who cares about the health and safety of South Carolinians should be fighting tooth and nail to stop this bill.”
“This bill is dangerous beyond anything we’ve seen before,” said Amalia Luxardo, CEO of the Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network (WREN). “It doesn’t just ban abortion. It criminalizes doctors, censors information, and even opens the door for lawsuits against anyone who helps a pregnant person.”
“South Carolinians are already suffering under the state’s cruel six-week abortion ban. Instead of listening to the people they represent, lawmakers are bowing to the extremist anti-abortion lobby. Our communities deserve compassion and care — not more dangerous, punitive laws that force people to stay pregnant against their will,” said Ashlyn Preaux, Executive Director of Palmetto State Abortion Fund.
“The League of Women Voters is deeply concerned about this extreme assault on the rights of South Carolinians. If passed, this would relegate everyone who becomes pregnant to the control of the state. All who care about the preservation of the rights that Americans have valued over the years must reject this bill,” said Lynn Teague, Vice President of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina.
"All abortion bans are deadly. They threaten the lives of pregnant South Carolinians and create a culture of fear that forces providers to delay or deny people access to time-sensitive care under threat of criminal persecution. But this heinous bill escalates those threats to an unprecedented degree," said Vicki Ringer, Director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. "In no uncertain terms, our legislators are threatening to put patients who seek abortion care on death row and providers in prison for decades, all while reducing access to other essential reproductive care services, like birth control and IVF. It's a gross overreach of power into the personal lives of South Carolina families that cannot be allowed to move forward."
South Carolina already has one of the most extreme abortion bans in the industrialized world, passed in 2023. The existing law bans nearly all abortions beyond 6 weeks after a person’s last menstrual period, despite a Winthrop Poll showing that 63% of South Carolinians did not support this policy.
The existing law has already caused medical professionals to leave South Carolina, forced people to seek unsafe abortions or travel out of state, and endangered the lives of pregnant people due to the constraints placed on life-saving abortions.
Senate Bill 323 would further endanger the lives and autonomy of South Carolinians. It would delete the “fetal heartbeat” provision from the existing law, effectively moving the state from a 6-week abortion ban to a total abortion ban. It would delete exceptions allowing abortion at later stages for victims of rape and incest, as well as for cases of fatal fetal anomaly.
Among other things, S. 323 would also:
- make abortion a felony equivalent to “the homicide of a person born alive"
- allow imprisonment up to 30 years for a person having an abortion or aiding in abortion
- prohibit transporting a minor out of state to obtain an abortion
- restrict the use of birth control by amending the definition of a legal “contraceptive” to exclude anything that prevents ovulation or implantation of a fertilized ovum
- restrict in vitro fertilization by defining a “human embryo” as a fertilized egg or zygote
- make it unlawful to possess any drug or substance that can be used for abortion
- make providing information about abortion unlawful, including via a website or phone call
- require students in public school sex education to watch the an anti-abortion propaganda video called "Meet Baby Olivia," produced by the anti-abortion group Live Action