Commentary: Expanding SC’s abortion ban would take state backward

By Lynn S. Teague

Roe v. Wade survived for almost 50 years because it has accurately reflected a majority national consensus on the difficult issues around abortion, although a very vocal minority has remained in opposition. Now, Roe has been ended by the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, a decision widely criticized for its defective legal logic and strong overtones of sectarian religious thinking.

A CBS News Poll reported on June 26 that 52% of Americans consider the ruling a step backward for our nation, in contrast to 31% who describe it as a step forward, a more than 20-point margin rejecting the direction that the court is taking us in. This decision did not “return abortion decisions to the people” as some have claimed. It took the decision from the people most affected, those who are pregnant and their families, and gave it to state legislatures.

The Roe decision reflected the majority belief in our nation that those who are pregnant have a right to protect their bodily autonomy before the point at which a fetus becomes viable outside the uterus. That same majority has recognized the need for legal protections for the fetus when it becomes viable, barring findings of severe fetal abnormalities or significant danger to the health or life of the mother. The League of Women Voters of South Carolina supports legislation that would codify in South Carolina’s laws this morally sound and widely shared understanding.

Instead, South Carolina’s extremist “heartbeat” law that prohibits most abortions when women are only about six weeks pregnant has gone into effect. And even that is not enough for some. There has been a call for a “no-exceptions” abortion ban. In response, H.5399 is being considered by the S.C. House of Representatives, and a companion bill has been filed in the Senate. The League does not respond by begging for specific exceptions for those who are raped or victims of incest or even in danger of losing their lives. We reject the entire enterprise on which abortion opponents in our General Assembly have embarked.

There is no equal protection under the laws when the right to bodily autonomy is destroyed for women in a way that no one (and no religious denomination) considers inflicting on men in the most closely comparable situation, organ donation. There is no religious freedom when all are required to live by the extreme prohibitions dictated not by science (which assigns no moral meaning to stages in the life cycle) but by the theology of a few religious denominations. These abortion bans conflict even with the explicit teachings of many Christian and Jewish denominations

The right to a safe and legal abortion is also a major factor in racial and economic equality. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed nation, and South Carolina’s is among the nation’s worst. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control has reported that for 2015-19, our white maternal mortality rate was 18 deaths per 100,000 live births. The black maternal death rate was 42.3 per 100,000 live births.

Prohibiting abortion would amplify these appalling numbers, given the grotesque inequity in health care that has produced this extreme racial disparity. As in the days before Roe, the affluent would obtain safe abortions elsewhere while the poor would suffer, and often die, here. This General Assembly has shown little interest in adequately addressing these painful issues. Legislators instead have proudly decided to return a billion dollars to taxpayers. Some fraction of that could have mitigated the horror that is maternal death, and especially black maternal death, in South Carolina.

And what of the lives of the children born of unwanted pregnancies? As a study published in 2018 in “The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics” summarized the bleak reality: “When a poor pregnant woman decides to keep her unplanned pregnancy, the odds are great that both she and her child will face a lifetime of poverty and ill health.”

No additional abortion restrictions should be enacted in state law. Instead, South Carolina’s laws should reflect the broad consensus that does not deny the moral agency and bodily autonomy of those who are pregnant but does offer substantial protection to the viable fetus.

Lynn S. Teague is vice president of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina.