SC Republicans Introduce More Abortion Bans and Bills Targeting Queer Youth

Heads up, the Legislature is back in session

The 125th session of the South Carolina General Assembly began this week, and we already have anti-trans bills and abortion bans on the docket. In the November election, Republicans picked up enough seats to ensure a House supermajority (legitimately flipping four seats and picking up four in newly-districted gerrymandered districts). The Senate also has a Republican majority but not the two-thirds needed for a supermajority (the entire SC Senate is up for reelection in 2024).

Now’s the time to start planning for the next election cycle, after Democrats suffered big losses at the state level. We know young voters are poised to become the biggest voting block nationally by 2028, with the combo of millennials and Gen Z, but as always, election results will depend on turnout. We started Spring classes today and I asked my first-year students if they had voted last year. None of them had.

I understand why. It’s disheartening to vote for Democrats and lose all the time, and many races feature either Republicans running uncontested or Democratic candidates so underfunded or unappealing that they will never turn out the vote. State senator Mia McLeod just announced she’s leaving the Democratic party after this recent string of losses. Clearly the state-level party has some soul-searching to do, but a lot of it comes down to funding, demographics and turnout.

But we can’t give up. The recent state Supreme Court decision to protect abortion rights on the basis of privacy guarantees in the state constitution is a huge win, but constitutions can be amended. As Justice Hearn notes, exactly this happened in Tennessee. After the state Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution protected abortion rights based on privacy guarantees, voters amended the state constitution in 2014. Amendment 1 gave the state legislature the right to regulate (and ban) abortion. After Roe fell, Tennessee enacted one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or life of the mother.

It’s likely that SC lawmakers will keep trying to further restrict abortion access in the state (abortion is legal up to 22 weeks currently). The state Supreme Court decision last week is no home run for reproductive rights, leaving plenty of room for bans after the first trimester, for example. There are also bills attempting to grant personhood to embryos and fetuses, which would then criminalize doctors and women who seek abortions under homicide and infanticide laws. Jessica Valenti broke the news that Alabama’s attorney general was considering criminally charging women who take abortion medication, even though Republicans there (and elsewhere) have promised not to send women to prison for seeking abortions. This could easily happen here, where self-managed abortion is already a crime.

The Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network (WREN) lists the bills here, with links to contact your state representatives voicing your opposition. They’re also fighting against bills that would block gender-affirming care for anyone under 21 (part of a horrifying national effort to target queer children for culture war points).

So it’s time for the state-level Democratic party to get it together and work on appealing to the majority voting block of millennials and Gen Zers that await us in 2028. Imagine a South Carolina that in six years is closer to a functioning democracy that protects the privacy rights of all of its residents. Maybe the first step towards this goal is to let our hopes, instead of our past disappointments, guide us. We do not want abortion rights and trans rights legislated in a state with Republican supermajorities in both chambers.

Six years ago at the Greenville Women’s March in 2017 with fellow feminist Dr. Jaclyn Sumner.