A South Carolina senate panel voted in favor of a personhood bill last week, sending the measure to the state Senate on a 15-9 vote. The bill would recognize preborn babies as human beings from the moment of fertilization, and therefore, would ensure them “the constitutional right to due process of law and equal protection under the law,” as outlined in the South Carolina constitution. If the bill is passed, it would effectively ban abortions, and would join South Carolina with Missouri and Kansas as states with personhood laws.
“We are trying to challenge the Supreme Court on their fundamental error that a human being is not a person,” State Senator Richard J. Cash said, told The State. “A human being is a person.”
Gov. Henry McMaster indicated his support for the bill. In a statement, McMaster applauded the measure, noting that the state “must do everything” to protect the lives of “the born and unborn, young and old.”
“I believe that human life begins at conception, and I believe the people of South Carolina deserve for their laws to reflect the values they hold dear,” McMaster said. “I applaud the Senate Judiciary Committee’s decision to move this important legislation forward and ask that the Senate pass it without delay.”
The legislation is widely seen as a potential challenge for Roe v. Wade, as Personhood South Carolina outlined:
The personhood movement has its origins in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the very Supreme Court case which struck down state statutes on abortion. When the state of Texas was presenting its case, it argued that a fetus was a person within the language and meaning of the 14th amendment, and therefore protected.
In writing his opinion, Justice Blackmun claimed he could find no basis for such status. He noted, however, that “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case [Roe’s case], of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be protected.”
As medicine and science advance, the humanity of the preborn child is more and more undeniable.
Live Action Founder and President Lila Rose applauded South Carolina lawmakers for taking action to protect the most vulnerable, noting that science has made it clear that preborn children are human beings — something members of the abortion industry have admitted, and tried to conceal. Rose called for bill’s passage, stating it would right “years of injustices.”
South Carolina’s bill affirms the logical and moral conclusion we can draw from the scientific evidence. That’s because all innocent human life requires protection under the law, and because human life begins in the womb, human embryos deserve legal protection just as born children do.
The alternative is nothing more than the rule that the strongest wins.
The popular phrase in defense of abortion is that “women have the right to choose.” Of course, I agree that all women — and all people — possess the “right to choose.” But we are not free to do whatever we please without consequences. Do we want to live in a society where we are free to choose to kill those who are weaker, without consequence?
When we allow one person’s right to “choose” to trump another person’s right to exist, we say that some people’s lives are expendable for the convenience of others.
That breeds a culture of the strong versus the weak, the healthy versus the sick, the young versus the old, and even parents versus their own children. But few stay healthy and strong lifelong, and no one stays young. Or maybe you don’t think abortion will really have that effect. When over 3,000 abortions are committed daily in this country – the consequences of that brutal act leave few untouched.
