Late last month, a small group of doctors visited Gov. Mark Sanford in his private offices.

Their purpose: to beg him to sign a primary seat-belt bill into law.

“What you do is life and death to people,” Dr. James DuRant, a Sumter pediatrician, told the governor. “Your pen can save lives.”

Sanford was moved.

Once a staunch opponent of the bill, he is rethinking his position.

At the meeting, DuRant’s son, David, 16, showed Sanford a 60-second DVD from his laptop showing a depiction of an unbuckled person who is thrown around the inside a car during an accident. The unbuckled human projectile killed other people who were buckled up — a phenomenon safety experts say can happen. Last year, David DuRant was saved from death or serious injury by a seat belt, his father said.

The doctors, who included Dr. Caughman Taylor, president of the 600-member S.C. chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, are just a few of the people with firsthand experience with traffic deaths and injuries who are seeing Sanford privately these days.

They show him statistics about how primary seat-belt laws save lives, tell him about needless deaths and medical bills, and plead with him to put aside libertarian philosophies about freedom from government regulation, and instead to save people’s lives.

Sanford said Friday that three weeks ago, he had been inclined to veto any seat-belt law that reached his desk.

But people like DuRant and Taylor are causing him to rethink his position, which by implication involves such matters as whether the government should ban smoking — which is proven to kill people, Sanford said.

“That is a deeply complex philosophical question that I’m going to wrestle with over the next couple of days,” Sanford said. He has until Tuesday to decide whether to allow the bill to become law.

Sanford may yet veto the bill, which safety experts say could save up to 100 lives a year, prevent numerous injuries and save millions in medical costs. The bill would allow police to ticket anyone not wearing a seat belt. Similar laws in other states have driven up seat-belt usage and reduced traffic deaths.

In prior decisions in which Sanford weighed saving lives with laws that he considers an intrusion into personal freedoms, he has shown that saving lives sometimes takes second place.

In 2003, Sanford killed a bill that would have required deer hunters on private land to wear a patch of orange. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Billy Witherspoon, R-Horry, who knew a woman whose son had accidentally killed his brother during a hunting trip.

At that time, Sanford said hunters should have the freedom to wear what clothes they like on private property.

According to the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, three or four hunters are killed each year, and most of those fatalities are from falling out of trees.

More than 600 people who weren’t wearing seat belts died last year in South Carolina. Statistics say 40 percent or more would be saved if they had worn seat belts.

South Carolina currently has a weak, or secondary, seat-belt law. It prevents police from citing motorists for most seat-belt violations.

Partially as a result of the weak law, South Carolina has one of the nation’s lowest seat-belt usage rates — 67 percent. At the same time, the state has one of the highest death rates; about 75 percent of the people who die in accidents aren’t buckled up.

So far this year, 445 people have died on state roads, 23 more than last year at this time, according to the S.C. Department of Public Safety. Of those deaths, 347 were in vehicles and had access to seat belts. Of that 347, 75 percent weren’t buckled up, according to DPS.

At Friday’s press conference, and in remarks afterward, Sanford revealed how he is grappling with the seat-belt issue.

“My struggle is that our country was founded on the notion of personal responsibility and personal judgment. That included the freedom to make judgments that were good and bad.”

Sanford said it is a “stupid” decision not to wear a seat belt.

But if government is going to require people to wear seat belts, it should “maximize” the trade off of personal responsibility by making sure it is an effective seat-belt law, he said.

Thus, from the point of view of being an effective seat-belt bill, Sanford said he believes the proposal is overly weak. The proposed fine is low ($25), it prohibits “click it or ticket” roadblock campaigns, and it prevents a seat-belt violation from being put on a person’s driving record or used by insurance companies to push up rates.

If lawmakers begin “trading off” personal rights, they should do it effectively, Sanford said. “If government is going to decide for you, wouldn’t you want to really maximize the outcome?”

The doctors who met with Sanford conceded the proposed law could be stronger. But they said numerous studies show even a simple primary seat-belt law will save many lives.

Taylor, the state’s top pediatrician, said he told Sanford about all the lives and money that could be saved with a primary seat belt law. Then he told Sanford a story. Several years ago, two parents and two of their children were killed in an accident on an interstate. All were unbuckled.

“The only child that survived was the infant in the car seat,” said Taylor.

Rep. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, met with Sanford and the doctors.

“I told him that I have a lot of libertarian tendencies in me, and it’s something that I’ve wrestled with.” Smith said he told the governor the numerous news accounts of unbuckled people being killed finally convinced him to support the bill.

“That’s what’s brought me around,” Smith said. “If it prevents one death, it was worth me putting aside those beliefs.”

DuRant, the Sumter pediatrician, said he was pleasantly surprised how receptive Sanford was when he met with the doctors.

“At least he’s thinking about it. That’s all we can ask him to do.”