The 125th session of the South Carolina General Assembly is in full swing with a newly proposed bill, H.B. 3549, or the “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023.” What does “Prenatal Equal Protection” consist of? According to ABC affiliate WPDE, the bill would define any unborn child, at any stage of development, as a “person.”
What this means, however, is that the “equal protections” being offered “would ensure that an unborn child who is a ‘victim of homicide’ or ‘victim of assault’ is given the same protections under state laws—including, up to the death penalty.” You thought you didn’t have rights before? How about you can be executed by the state for exercising your right to manage your own health and body?
This new bill comes less than two months after South Carolina’s own Supreme Court ruled the state’s six week abortion ban infringed upon citizens’ Constitutional rights to privacy.
RELATED STORY: South Carolina Supreme Court struck down 6-week abortion ban. Republicans are debating it again
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The bill was introduced at the end of February by state Rep. Rob Harris (R-Spartanburg County), who said, “We have due process laws, as long as they’re followed. I’m not inventing any new processes. The constitution of both states require due process and equal protection. So if you’re accused of stealing a candy bar, if you’re accused of murdering somebody, it would go through the same process.” (But what if a fetus steals a candy bar Mr. Harris? Maybe it’s time to cut off its hand? Just asking questions over here.)
Director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood, Vicki Ringer, told WBTW “That’s a hard pill to swallow for anybody. To recognize that you are not valuable. To call this equal protection, it is far from equal. It is giving greater weight to a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus than it is to a human being. You can consider a fetus to be a person, but you can’t consider it to have more weight than the living person who is a life fully lived on this planet.”
The kind of people supporting this legislation are folks like William “Bill” Chumley, best known around these here parts for fighting against businesses’ right to mandate masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, and before that trying to ban non-existent Sharia Law from being practiced in South Carolina. Seems like Harris is really wallowing in bottom of the barrel company these days. If you think Harris truly hates the idea of reproductive rights, never fear, he told WBTW that there would be exceptions for people who were pressured or had the decision made for them by somebody else.
What does that mean? Like everything state Rep. Harris has said on this subject, the vague and mealy-mouthedness of it all tells you everything you need to know about his integrity on the matter.
Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation talked about what the anti-reproductive rights movement plans were, including laws like H.B. 3549 with Markos and Kerry on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast back in May of 2022.
