Republicans hold up right to life bill

By STEVE LEFEMINE

Guest columnist

The Right to Life Act could also be called South Carolina’s “Personhood for the unborn” bill.

The bill recognizes the legal “personhood” of all pre-birth humans at fertilization. It would ban all legalized child murder by abortion, because the state constitution, in Article I, Section 3, already protects legal “persons” from being deprived of life without due process of law, and in the bill’s original form (i.e., without any “exceptions”), it would inarguably place all pre-birth human beings in the same protected status.

In the text of the Roe v. Wade decision 33 years ago, the Supreme Court said that if personhood for the “fetus” was established, then the case for abortion would collapse.

With the 2006 session of the Legislature scheduled to end on June 1, unless the Senate takes action on the version that passed the House in 2005 (H 3213), the bill will die, and the 6,500-plus children murdered every year in South Carolina by surgical abortion will have to wait until the 2007 session for new legislation to pass, at the earliest.

Incredibly, even though the bill passed the House in April 2005, (albeit with a fatal flaw rape exception that must be removed), the bill has gone nowhere in the Senate after two public hearings in May 2005 before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Jim Ritchie, R-Spartanburg. The bill has sat in this Subcommittee for more than one year, even though Republicans outnumber Democrats four to one. This includes Sen. Glenn McConnell, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. With just days left in the 2006 session, unless something changes, and quickly, the bill will die June 1.

The Right to Life Act was first filed in 1998, by the late Rep. Terry Haskins in the House and Sen. Mike Fair in the Senate. It has been an active bill in the House every year since. The Republicans have been the majority in control of the House consistently for 12 years, beginning in 1995. House Republican leaders had opposed the bill for years, or not supported it. Then, in early 2005, the attorney general issued a legal opinion that the Right to Life Act was constitutional on its face, though, if applied to abortion, it would have to be adjudicated. The bill finally passed the House in April 2005, and went over to the Senate.

If the Senate refuses to take action to pass the Right to Life Act by June 1, the responsibility must rightly be placed at the feet of those senators who are members of the political party that is in power:

• The Republicans are the majority in the S.C. House (74 Republicans to 50 Democrats).

• The Republicans are the majority in the S.C. Senate (26 Republicans to 20 Democrats).

• The Republicans occupy the governor’s office, the lieutenant governor’s office and the attorney general’s office .

It is the Republicans in the Senate who are responsible for refusing to take action to pass the Right to Life Act, and who will therefore be responsible for prolonging child-killing in our state.

Mr. Lefemine is the director of Columbia Christians for Life.