Lauren Sausser and Bram Sable-Smith
COLUMBIA, S.C. — When a trio of Republican state lawmakers launched a invoice final yr that will topic girls who acquire abortions to a long time in jail, some reproductive rights advocates feared South Carolina may move the “most extreme” abortion ban within the United States.
Now, although, it appears unlikely to turn out to be state regulation. In November, a vote to advance the bill past a legislative subcommittee failed. Four out of six Republicans on the Senate Medical Affairs Committee subpanel refused to vote on the measure.
Republican state Sen. Jeff Zell stated throughout a November subcommittee listening to that he needed to assist “move this pro-life football down the field and to save as many babies as we can.” Still, he couldn’t assist the invoice as written.
“What I am interested in is speaking on behalf of the South Carolinian,” he stated, “and they’re not interested in this bill right now or this issue right now.”
While that invoice stalled, it alerts that abortion will proceed to loom massive throughout 2026 legislative periods. More than three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, measures associated to abortion have already been prefiled in a number of states, together with Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Missouri, and Virginia.
Meanwhile, the South Carolina invoice additionally uncovered a rift amongst Republicans. Some GOP lawmakers are wanting to enchantment to their most conservative supporters by pursuing extra restrictive abortion legal guidelines, regardless of the dearth of assist for such measures amongst most voters.
Until just lately, the thought of charging girls who acquire abortions with a criminal offense was thought-about “politically toxic,” stated Steven Greene, a political science professor at North Carolina State University.
Yet at least 15 states launched “abortion as homicide” payments throughout 2024-2025 legislative periods, lots of which included the demise penalty as a possible sentence, based on Dana Sussman, senior vp of Pregnancy Justice, a corporation that tracks the criminalization of being pregnant outcomes.
Even although none of these payments was signed into regulation, Sussman referred to as this “a hugely alarming trend.”
“My fear is that one of these will end up passing,” she stated.
Less than a month after the invoice stalled in South Carolina, another bill — which might create legal penalties for “coercion to obtain an abortion” — was prefiled forward of the Jan. 13 begin of the state’s legislative session.
“The issue is not going away. It’s a moral issue,” stated state Sen. Richard Cash, who launched the abortion invoice that stalled within the subcommittee. “How far we can go, and what successes we can have, remain to be seen.”
‘Wrongful Death’
Florida regulation already bans abortion after six weeks of being pregnant. But a Republican lawmaker launched a bill in October proposing civil liability for the “wrongful death” of a fetus. If enacted, the measure will enable mother and father to sue for the demise of an unborn youngster, making them eligible for compensation, together with damages for psychological ache and struggling.
The invoice says neither the mom nor a medical supplier giving “lawful” care could possibly be sued. But anybody else deemed to have acted with “negligence,” together with somebody who helps procure abortion-inducing drugs or a health care provider who performs an abortion after six weeks, could possibly be sued by one of many mother and father.
In Missouri, a constitutional modification to legalize abortion handed in 2024 with 51.6% of the vote. In 2026, state lawmakers are asking voters to repeal the modification they simply handed. A brand new proposed modification would successfully reinstate the state’s ban on most abortions, with new exceptions for circumstances of rape, incest, and medical emergencies.
“I think that’s a middle-of-the-road, common sense proposal that most Missourians will agree with,” stated Ed Lewis, a Republican state consultant who sponsored the legislation to place the measure on the poll.
Lewis stated the 2024 modification went too far in permitting a legal basis to challenge all of Missouri’s abortion restrictions, generally referred to as “targeted regulation of abortion providers,” or TRAP, legal guidelines. Even earlier than Missouri’s outright ban, the variety of abortions recorded within the state had dropped from 5,772 in 2011 to 150 in 2021.
Meanwhile, Lewis backed one other proposed constitutional modification that can seem on the 2026 poll. That measure would make it tougher for Missourians to amend the state structure, by requiring any modification to obtain a majority of votes in every congressional district.
One evaluation prompt as few as 5% of voters could defeat any poll measure beneath the proposal. Lewis dismissed the evaluation as a “Democratic talking point.”
‘Gerrymandered’ Districts
Republican lawmakers aren’t essentially aiming to move abortion legal guidelines that enchantment to the broadest swath of voters of their states.
Polling performed forward of Missouri’s vote in 2024 confirmed 52% of the state’s doubtless voters supported the constitutional modification to guard entry to abortion, a slender majority that was per the ultimate vote.
In Texas, state regulation presents no exceptions for abortion in circumstances of rape or incest, regardless that a 2025 survey discovered 83% of Texans imagine the process must be authorized beneath these circumstances.
In South Carolina, a 2024 ballot discovered solely 31% of respondents supported the state’s present six-week abortion ban, which prohibits the process normally after fetal cardiac exercise will be detected.
But Republicans maintain supermajorities within the South Carolina General Assembly, and a few proceed to push for a near-total abortion ban regardless that such a regulation would in all probability be broadly unpopular. That’s as a result of district strains have been drawn in such a manner that politicians usually tend to be ousted by a extra conservative member of their very own celebration in a main than defeated by a Democrat in a basic election, stated Scott Huffmon, director of the Center for Public Opinion & Policy Research at Winthrop University.
The South Carolina legislature is “so gerrymandered that more than half of the seats in both chambers were uncontested in the last general election. Whoever wins the primary wins the seat,” Huffmon stated. “The best way to win the primary — or, better yet, prevent a primary challenge at all — is to run to the far right and embrace the policies of the most conservative people in the district.”
That’s what some proposals, together with the “abortion as homicide” payments, replicate, stated Greene, the North Carolina State professor. Lawmakers may vote for such a measure and undergo “very minimal, if any,” political backlash, he stated.
“Most of the politicians passing these laws are more concerned with making the base happy than with actually dramatically reducing the number of abortions that take place within their jurisdiction,” Greene stated.
Yet the variety of abortions carried out in South Carolina has dropped dramatically — by 63% from 2023 to 2024, when the state enacted the prevailing ban, based on information revealed by the state’s Department of Public Health.
Kimya Forouzan, a coverage adviser with the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion laws all through the nation and advocates for reproductive rights, stated South Carolina’s try to move “the most extreme bill that we have seen” is “part of a pattern.”
“I think the push for anti-abortion legislation exists throughout the country,” she stated. “There are a lot of battles that are brewing.”
KFF Health News correspondent Daniel Chang and Southern bureau chief Sabriya Rice contributed to this report.
