South Carolina MAGA Legislators Reintroduce Bill Mandating Death Penalty For Women Seeking Abortion

On his Substack, Qasim Rashid recently reported that legislators in South Carolina have “introduced a bill mandating the death penalty for women who seek an abortion” (https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/s-carolina-intros-bill-to-execute?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email). At the same time, CBS News reported that the U.S. Supreme Court has “agreed to consider the South Carolina health department's effort to cut off funding from Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions, wading into another dispute over access to the procedure in the wake of its reversal of Roe v. Wade (https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/supreme-court-south-carolina-planned-parenthood/). According to Rashid, “For the second time since 2023, MAGA Republicans in South Carolina have introduced SC H3537, also known as The South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act.” He pointed out that the bill “is one of the most extreme pieces of legislation we’ve seen... . [as] It proposes changing the legal definition of the word ‘person’ to include an unborn fetus. This means that a woman who gets an abortion could be charged with homicide, a crime punishable by the death penalty in South Carolina. To be clear: this bill would make it possible for the state to execute women for seeking an abortion.”WLXT 19 reported that “The legislation includes a few exceptions. Those include life-saving medical procedures, spontaneous miscarriages, and unintentional errors by licensed medical professionals. Additionally, individuals who have been threatened with physical harm to obtain an abortion would be able to use that as a defense” (https://www.wltx.com/article/news/health/bill-reintroduced-that-would-allow-homicide-charges-for-abortion-south-carolina/101-78b7b47b-e4aa-4a83-b234-d1613bf83cfb). As with other examples of harsh anti-abortion measures popping up all over Red States, it doesn’t really matter if this particular piece of legislation becomes law at this time, because as Rashid noted, “its introduction has already accomplished the goal of moving the Overton Window towards acceptance. Ultimately, other right wing state legislatures will propose similar bills, in hopes that one such bill reaches the Supreme Court for their stamp of approval. The GOP used this strategy to ultimately overturn Roe, and is again using this strategy to enact this nightmare piece of legislation.”