As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage across our state, South Carolina Republicans – led by Governor Henry McMaster – decided that their time is best spent trying to enact a blatantly unconstitutional abortion ban similar to those already struck down in states like Georgia and Mississippi.
Let’s be clear: Republicans know that this bill will never become law. In fact, just one day after Governor McMaster signed the fetal heartbeat abortion ban, a federal judge had already suspended it. However, the 2022 midterm elections are right around the corner, and McMaster and his State House counterparts are desperate to stay in power through any means necessary, including partisan pandering.
If you think that’s bad, it gets worse. On Thursday, while McMaster made a public spectacle signing the abortion ban in front of news cameras and surrounded by his colleagues, a bill that would appropriate $208 million for the state’s COVID-19 relief efforts and vaccine rollout still awaited his signature.
It was only on Friday afternoon – twenty-four hours after he signed the abortion ban and after the South Carolina Democratic Party released a statement condemning his inaction on H.3707 – that Governor McMaster found time in his schedule to finalize this significantly more important piece of legislation.
“Yesterday Governor McMaster proclaimed he was pro-life by signing an unconstitutional bill which will ultimately waste millions of our tax-dollars while it is disputed in court. How he makes a claim like that when he ignores the bill designed to save people’s lives, proves Republicans only care about the unborn and not those of us who are living,” said Chairman Trav Robertson, Jr. in SCDP’s statement.
In the GOP’s rushed attempt to ban abortion – which will ultimately be unsuccessful – they have abandoned the living. We have already lost over 7,000 South Carolinians to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic last year. A “pro-life” Governor would rush to save those lives too. But if this week in South Carolina politics has taught us anything, it’s that Governor McMaster and the GOP are not pro-life – they’re pro-birth.