SC Reps Try Again With Abortion Death Penalty Bill

The Huffington Post reports:

A handful of South Carolina Republicans plan to reintroduce a bill that would define abortion as homicide — a crime punishable by death under state law.

State Rep. Rob Harris (R) pre-filed the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act and it will be introduced in the judiciary committee when the legislative session begins in January. The proposed bill seeks to amend the state’s criminal code to widen the definition of “person” to include “an unborn child at any stage of development.”

The bill would define abortion, with few exceptions, as equivalent to killing a person under the criminal code. South Carolina currently has a six-week abortion ban in effect. If passed, this bill would effectively enact a total abortion ban because it considers all abortion, starting “from the moment of fertilization,” to be homicide.

Read the full article. Harris, a registered nurse and chairman of the state Freedom Caucus, appeared here last year when he first introduced the bill. His 2023 bill had 16 Republican cosponsors.