South Carolina – Republican lawmakers in South Carolina are working on new laws that will make it harder to get an abortion, especially medication abortions that are done through telehealth.
After a close, party-line vote in a House subcommittee on Wednesday, the attempt moved forward. This means that the idea is likely to keep moving through the Legislature.
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The panel voted 3–2 to support a bill that would change the classification of the medications mifepristone and misoprostol, which are often used together to end early pregnancies, to Schedule IV controlled narcotics.
Valium and Xanax are two examples of drugs that fall into that category right now. If the reform goes through, it would only be lawful to have the abortion pills with a prescription, and anybody who break the law would face criminal penalties for violations.
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People who illegally have or give out the drugs might be fined up to $5,000 and sent to prison for up to five years, according to the bill.
There is also a tougher punishment under the proposal: up to 10 years in prison for anyone who administers the medications to a pregnant woman without her knowledge with the goal of causing an abortion. But the law says that an expecting mother couldn’t be charged with having the medications for her own use.
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The measure now heads to the full House Judiciary Committee, where it is widely expected to be approved. The bill has a clear path in the House because Rep. Weston Newton, the committee’s chairman, is its main backer.
Most of the two-hour meeting on Wednesday was about Newton’s proposal and the bigger topic of telehealth abortions. Providers in South Carolina are already not allowed to send abortion drugs through the mail.
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Medication abortions are still lawful in the state up to six weeks into a pregnancy, but the medicines must be given out in person at a clinic.
Supporters of the law said that the stricter classification will make the state’s legal case stronger as more and more abortion cases go to court. Some states let doctors prescribe abortion pills over the phone and send them to patients, even if they live in places where abortion is illegal.
Some of such restrictions have led to lawsuits, such as those in Texas and Louisiana against doctors who work in states that protect them from prosecution.
The subcommittee also briefly discussed a different, much broader abortion plan at the same meeting. That law would protect unborn children by making abortion a crime like murder and permitting women to be arrested. The bill’s sponsor argued that the goal was to get rid of what he called “immunity from criminal liability” for women who had abortions.
The proposal didn’t get a vote and is not likely to move forward. Even lawmakers who are against abortion have said that it goes too far. Similar laws that were offered in earlier sessions didn’t get enough support and ended up going nowhere.
Since that measure has been put on hold, the focus is now on the bill that targets pharmaceutical abortions. It seems likely to move forward as politicians continue to argue about how much South Carolina should regulate abortion after Roe v. Wade.
