WASHINGTON — South Carolina Republicans have managed to take their anti-abortion position even further to the right, proposing a law that could make a woman who gets an abortion eligible for the death penalty. Rolling Stone highlights the fact that this attack on women isn’t from just one or two radicals in the caucus, but 21 Republican co-sponsors that will stop at nothing to roll back access to reproductive care. South Carolina is simply the latest example of the GOP using their power to trample over reproductive freedoms.
“Given the opportunity, these Republican lawmakers would kill a woman for exercising her reproductive freedom,” said DLCC spokesperson Gabrielle Chew. “If it was up to the Republican Party, Americans would have no say over their own bodies and reproductive freedom would be banned across the country. The GOP is rotten to its core, and far too many lawmakers that hold these extreme views are in positions of power. These extremists should have no place in the halls of our state capitals. That is why the DLCC is fighting to elect Democrats who will put power back in the hands of the American people.”
Rolling Stone: 21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions
Members of the South Carolina State House are considering a bill that would make a woman who has an abortion in the state eligible for the death penalty.
The “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023” would amend the state’s code of laws, redefining “person” to include a fertilized egg at the point of conception, affording that zygote “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state” — up to and including the ultimate punishment: death…
In 2021, legislators in South Carolina — which has experienced difficulty obtaining drugs to carry out executions by lethal injection — revived the electric chair and firing squads as methods to kill inmates convicted of capital crimes. (The South Carolina Supreme Court is currently weighing the constitutionality of that law after a lower court found lawmakers who passed the law “ignored advances in scientific research and evolving standards of humanity and decency.”)
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, Republican lawmakers in South Carolina’s House and Senate have failed to agree on new abortion restrictions. Republicans in the House have insisted on outlawing abortion at conception, while the GOP majority in the Senate has put forth a proposal that would ban the practice at around six weeks gestation.
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