Memos & Media Guidance National
ICYMI
ICYMI: South Carolina Legislature Holds Another Hearing For a Bill to Totally Ban Abortion
Next week, the South Carolina Legislature is holding another hearing about Senate Bill 323, an extreme, total abortion ban that would also set the foundation to ban birth control in the state. The second hearing for this bill will be on November 18th.
Senate Bill 323 goes farther than any other state’s abortion ban. This bill:
- Creates a total abortion ban that categorizes abortion care as homicide, with a 30-year prison sentence,
- Has no exceptions for rape, incest, or fatal fetal diagnoses,
- Prohibits aiding and abetting abortion care, which includes providing information, maintaining a website, or providing a referral to abortion care,
- Changes the definitions of contraception, fertilization, and pregnancy in such a way that it puts access to birth control at risk.
Earlier this year, Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju issued the following statement in response to SB 323:
“Not only is this a cruel abortion ban that will put people’s lives at risk, but it also puts birth control on the chopping block. It’s no coincidence this is happening as the Trump administration lays the groundwork to restrict—or even ban—contraception. These attacks prove that they never planned to stop at overturning Roe. We now must do everything in our power to stop them.”
While South Carolina is carrying out these egregious attacks on abortion, the Trump administration is defunding Planned Parenthood, gutting funding for Medicaid, considering abortion coverage bans to any subsidy extension, and pushing to change the definition of contraception to redefine IUDs and other forms of birth control as abortion care – all backdoor abortion bans.
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For over 55 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.