House Floor: Protecting Life

As I shared from the House Floor, I didn’t wake up expecting to take the podium during this debate. But when I saw how the debate was going and how, once again, the chance to do something (ie, our job) was about to lose out to doing nothing (bill being defeated) – I had to speak up.

On the way to the State House , I wanted to thank y’all for responding to this year’s Legislative Survey and let you know: I heard you and I would be there for you. Overwhelmingly whether you identified as a “Trump Republican”, “Republican” or “Independent”, you wanted exceptions placed into the abortion bill for rape and incest. That’s how I voted and, ultimately, that’s what got into the bill that now heads to the Senate.

In the past few weeks, word was that there were going to be thousands of amendments placed on the desk and that this debate could go days, even into the weekend. That turned out not to be the case as we only had 20-25 amendments and debate was over by 7pm Tuesday night.

Early in debate two amendments to place exceptions were defeated… first only 25 supported , later 41 supported (we picked up more support when the reporting piece regarding rape was added to the earlier amendment). Ultimately after a 2 hour recess from the house floor, the House agreed to placing exceptions into the bill and the bill passed 67-38.

Long story short, what we accomplished was this: saving a bill from dying (it actually WAS defeated when it had no exceptions in it) and sending a stronger bill than we had passed in 2021 with the SC Fetal Heartbeat Bill.

In layman’s terms:

SC Fetal Heartbeat bill 2021 – banned abortions after 6 weeks except for rape or incest (allowed up to 20 weeks) or life of the mother

This bill which finally passed – bans abortions after Day One except for rate or incest (allowed now up to 12 weeks).

While some wanted NO EXCEPTIONS, that bill was never going to become law – much less pass the House.