The message to women in South Carolina who may soon be subjected to the most extreme anti abortion law in the world is - DO NOT EVER GET PREGNANT!
And if you do, immediately leave the state and never come back. It will be far too dangerous, to be pregnant South Carolina - the first Confederate state to rebel against the US in the Civil War.
Now the state that started the Civil War has declared war on every woman of child bearing age living within its boundaries with its cruel new bill - Senate Bill 323, titled the ‘Unborn Child Protection Act.’
Despite public hearings in which South Carolina’s women and numerous organizations pleaded with Republican lawmakers to throw Senate Bill 323 in the trash where it belongs, the Republican - dominated legislature is fast tracking the bill for passage.
South Carolina is finally doing what extremist anti abortion groups have been begging Republican state legislators to do ever since Roe V Wade was overturned - punish women who get abortions, with murder!
Am I being clear? If SB323 passes, it will makes getting an abortion in South Carolina, a felony.
And the punishment for the felony of murder in the state is, if a woman is lucky - 30 years in jail - or if a judge is as bloodthirsty as a some of the Republican lawmakers - it will be execution!
But if you don’t live in South Carolina, why should it matter to you that Republicans are drooling over the opportunity to execute pregnant women who dared to get an abortion?
I’m telling you that it’s time to wake up to the anti abortion extremism that is growing in every Republican - controlled state.
Extremist Christian Nationalist Republicans who are ultra MAGA have been headed in this direction ever since the Supreme Court took away the federally protected right to an abortion.
Donald Trump’s election has provided the rocket boost they’ve needed to put women back in ‘their place’ by controlling their bodies.
South Carolina is merely the first state to put into one chilling bill all the threats and the surveillance that MAGA Republicans have been itching to enact and if it is passed, you can bet that every Red state will soon be subjecting their women to the very same cruel restrictions.
So aside from potentially executing women for murder of their unborn babies if they try to leave South Carolina here’s where the surveillance comes in.
Anyone that a state prosecutor can identify who assists a pregnant woman leave the state in any way - with money, with providing transportation, with providing them with information about where to find an abortion clinic will face the charge of aiding and abetting a murderous abortion.
That means husbands, boyfriends, parents, sisters and best friends will all face punishment of 30 years in jail if they help their pregnant wife, girlfriend, daughter etc flee the state for an abortion.
The bill also makes it illegal for a parent to escape the state with their pregnant child or teen to get an abortion even if their 10 year-old daughter has been raped. If they go ahead and do it, they face 30 years in jail.
South Carolina Republicans are A Ok with child rape and incest victims being forced to carry and give birth to their rapists’ babies.
Then, the operators of any websites, available to be seen in South Carolina, which offer information about where to find abortion care or find abortion pill providers, will also face 30 year jail terms.
South Carolina will attempt to reach its law enforcement arm outside of the state and charge those operators, medical providers or abortion fund providers , with aiding and abetting abortion.
So much for the First Amendment and free speech, pregnant women are no longer entitled to that in South Carolina. They are banned from receiving information they need.
Do you not find that absolutely chilling? The banning of free speech for any website that has information on how to access an abortion clinic or to find out what type of an abortion you may need depending on how far along you are in a pregnancy?
Will Wikipedia be banned and all medical sites from around the country in case they provide any of that information?
Are we living in North Korea now?
Then of course, doctors in the state will face 30 year prison terms for performing an abortion which a prosecutor deems not necessary to save a woman’s life or a major bodily function.
We know how well that turns out for pregnant women. They will all risk deadly sepsis if they have a serious complication like Amanda Zurawski .
Amanda was forced to wait in Texas, until she was close enough to death, for a doctor to feel safe enough to provide an abortion after her water broke prematurely at 18 weeks.
Doctors ended up battling for 3 days to save her life after sepsis raged throughout her body. Her uterus collapsed and her fallopian tubes were so scarred that she is now infertile.
Every woman who miscarries in South Carolina will face the same fate as Amanda if SB323 passes. What doctor wouldn’t hesitate to treat a miscarrying woman if he could lose his medical license and go to jail for 30 years?
Women who miscarry will needlessly bleed to death or die from infections in South Carolina with doctors too terrified to provide lifesaving care to them.
But wait , there is far more in this new bill.
Here’s another first : South Carolina’s Senate Bill 323, defines every fertilized egg as a living human. That leaves the door wide open to Republican lawmakers banning every form of contraception in the state which zealous anti abortionists claim can prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus .
And believe me, anti abortionists assert without any scientific evidence that all forms of hormonal birth control as well as IUDs prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the womb and therefore by the new definition of ‘life’ under Senate Bill 232 they cause abortions.
Yup, contraceptives could almost all be banned too in South Carolina and the state’s new definition of life would also make IVF treatments all but impossible. So bye bye to their hopes of having children for couples struggling with infertility.
At the heart of this extremist and likely to pass bill is the MAGA patriarchal belief that every woman is just a vessel for her ‘unborn’ children.
She has no independent rights over her own body.
In South Carolina , Senate Bill 323 codifies that a fertilized egg’s existence is far more important than its mother’s. Since the bill bans abortion from that moment of conception with no exceptions for rape, incest or fatal fetal anomalies ie even if the baby a woman carries will be stillborn or will die right after birth , it’s her duty as a vessel to carry it through delivery.
Handmaid’s Tale anyone?
A pregnant woman’s health will mean nothing in South Carolina.
If a woman goes into labor prematurely at or after 19 weeks far earlier than viability, she will be forced to go through hours of labor and a delivery to give birth to their unviable fetus instead of undergoing a quick, fertility- preserving abortion.
The male lawmakers of South Carolina are demanding in SB323 that unviable fetuses must be preserved in an ‘intact’ fashion no matter how much their mothers suffer.
I hope you are seeing the risks here to yourself or any female you love, even if she is just a toddler.
This is the world that Republican now want every little girl to grow up in. She will not have the same rights as her brothers. She won’t even have the same rights that her mother enjoyed for decades .
With RFK Jr reviewing the safety of mifepristone, a drug that has proved safer than ibuprofen, and with state laws like this proposed bill or the recently passed law in Texas banning all abortion pills from entering the state, the future is looking mighty bleak for our country’s women and little girls .
It really is time to wake up and smell the threat of the Republican war on women and all that that means to you and every person with a uterus that you care about.
It’s high time to spread the word to your friends and family and to vote for every Democrat in every election no matter how small and local.
Vote, donate, write postcards, phone bank to elect Democrats - they are the only party supporting a woman’s right to an abortion which means a woman’s control over her own body.
Vote like keeping your uterus healthy depends on it, because it does!
Why don't the execute the men who got the women pregnant?
If somewhere in Europe decides women from South Carolina are eligible for asylum protection, I will fully support it. Their state is actively trying to kill them, after all.