Bill to Ban Abortions after 19 Weeks Heads to South Carolina Gov’s Desk

On Tuesday, the state legislature approved a bill designed to prevent women from having abortions after 19 weeks. It is now up to South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (pictured above) to decide whether the state will become the 17th to pass abortion restrictive legislation.

In March, Gov. Haley said she would certainly sign it off but she needed to check details before it reached her office.

About a dozen more states ban abortions after 19 weeks. In three states, legislation has been blocked by courts at feminists’ initiative. The U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t ruled yet whether the ban was constitutional.

South Dakota passed a similar law, which is slated to come into effect this summer. Utah now asks doctors to use anesthesia on the unborn babies if they are being aborted after 20 weeks.

In other states, regulators passed laws requiring admitting privileges for clinicians and one day of thought before the procedure for mothers. Many states have banned a popular abortion method used in the second trimester to crush the skulls and bones of the babies before taking them out.

Rep. Wendy Nanney, who proposed the new piece of legislation in South Carolina, is confident that the new rules would help the state “get rid of abortion altogether.” Nanney added that life begins at the conception so the new legislation does nothing less than protecting human life.

The bill passed in the House by a 79 to 29 vote. The Senate passed it by 36 to 9 two months prior.

Nevertheless, there are some exceptions to the new regulation. If the mother is in danger of losing her life or a doctor decides that the baby cannot be delivered alive, abortion is legal. But viable babies with severe ‘fetal anomalies’ can no longer be aborted under the new law.

The issue around fetal anomalies has been keeping the bill blocked in the Senate for years since Senators have fiercely debated over whether it should be a woman’s choice to terminate her baby if the child will be born disabled. In the end, opponents were able to obtain only an exception for the woman’s life.

Only four of the other 16 states with restrictive abortion legislation allow children to be aborted if a doctor believes that they would be born dead or die during delivery. South Carolina lawmakers copied Georgia’s legislation on this particular matter. Georgia banned 20-week abortions four years ago.

Image Source: Flickr

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Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.