Abortion bans fail in conservative South Carolina and Nebraska
Proposed abortion bans in Nebraska and South Carolina fell short of advancing in close votes this week amid heated debates among Republicans — confounding conservatives who have dominated both legislatures and further exposing the chasm on the issue of abortion within the GOP.
In Nebraska, where abortion is banned after 20 weeks of pregnancy, an effort to ban it at about the sixth week of pregnancy fell one vote short of breaking a filibuster Thursday. Cheers erupted outside the legislative chamber as the last vote was cast, with opponents of the bill waving signs and chanting, “Whose house? Our house!”
In South Carolina, lawmakers voted 22 to 21 on Thursday to shelve a near-total abortion ban for the rest of the year. Republican Sen. Sandy Senn criticized Majority Leader Shane Massey, saying he was repeatedly “taking us off a cliff on abortion.”
“The only thing that we can do when you all, you men in the chamber, metaphorically keep slapping women by raising abortion again and again and again, is for us to slap you back with our words,” she said.
The Nebraska proposal, backed by Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, is unlikely to move forward this year. And in South Carolina, where abortion remains legal through 22 weeks of pregnancy, the vote marked the third time a near-total abortion ban has failed in the Republican-led Senate since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe vs. Wade last summer.
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Katie Glenn, state policy director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, characterized the failure of both proposed bans as disappointing. “It’s a sign that legislating is hard, and there’s a lot of pieces and parts that all have to come together,” Glenn said.
The bans’ staunchest supporters have promised political retribution.
Since the fall of Roe, Nebraska and South Carolina have become regional havens of sorts as neighboring states have enacted stricter abortion bans. Conservative lawmakers have made that observation in Nebraska, which has a long history as a leader in abortion restrictions. In 2010, it was the first state in the nation to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Most aggravating to some Republicans is that the resistance is coming from inside the party.
The Nebraska bill failed Thursday when Republican Sen. Merv Riepe, an 80-year-old former hospital administrator, refused to give it the crucial 33rd vote needed to advance. Riepe was an original co-signer of the bill, but later expressed concern that a six-week ban might not give women enough time to know they are pregnant.
When his fellow Republicans rejected an amendment he offered to extend the proposed ban to 12 weeks and add an exception for fatal fetal anomalies, Riepe pointed to his own election last year against a Democrat who made abortion rights central to her campaign: His margin of victory dropped from 27 percentage points in the May primary election, which occurred before the fall of Roe, to fewer than 5 percentage points in the general election.
“Had my opponent had more time, more money, and more name recognition, she could have won. This made the message clear to me how critical abortion will be in 2024,” he said. “We must embrace the future of reproductive rights.”
Riepe joins some other Republicans across the country who have noted evidence pointing to abortion bans as unpopular with a majority of Americans. A nationwide AP VoteCast survey of the 2022 electorate indicated that only about 1 in 10 midterm voters — including Republicans — believed abortion should be “illegal in all cases.” Overall, a majority of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That includes nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and about 4 in 10 Republicans.
Even so, Republican politicians who buck party leadership on abortion can find themselves targets of political retaliation.
The backlash against Riepe was swift, with public reprimands from the governor and fellow GOP lawmakers. Antiabortion groups demanded his resignation. And the state Republican Party issued a statement warning that he would be censured. Riepe did not return a message Friday seeking comment.
Some of the South Carolina GOP holdouts shared last week that they had received anatomical backbone figurines from an antiabortion group urging them to “grow a spine” and pass a ban starting at conception.
The South Carolina vote came with days left in a session that began shortly after the state’s highest court struck down a 2021 law banning abortion when cardiac activity is detected, about six weeks into pregnancy. Since then, both chambers have advanced bills to ban abortion at differing stages — a disagreement that Massey, the Senate majority leader, had hoped to resolve by considering the stricter House bill.
Fourteen states have abortion bans in place for all stages of pregnancy. Four other states have bans throughout pregnancy, but enforcement is blocked by courts. The majority of those bans were adopted in anticipation of Roe vs. Wade being overturned, and most do not have exceptions for rape or incest.
In Utah, a judge heard a request from Planned Parenthood on Friday to delay implementing a statewide ban on abortion clinics set to take effect next week. Planned Parenthood argues that the state law, passed this year, will effectively end access to abortion throughout Utah as clinics are unable to receive the licenses they’ve historically relied on to operate.
In North Dakota, Gov. Doug Burgum signed a ban Monday that has narrow exceptions: Abortion is legal in cases of rape or incest, but only in the first six weeks of pregnancy. Abortion is allowed later in pregnancy only in specific medical emergencies.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a stockpile of 2 million abortion pills known as misoprostol after a Texas judge ruled against using a mifepristone, another medication to terminate pregnancies.
The North Dakota law is intended to replace a previous ban that is not being enforced while a state court weighs its constitutionality.
On Friday, Tennessee’s GOP Gov. Bill Lee reversed course and signed off on softening the state’s abortion ban.
His reversal came after several high-profile Republican lawmakers warned that doctors and patients faced steep risks under the state’s so-called trigger law, and argued that the statute did not include clear exemptions for when a physician may perform an abortion.
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