On February 15, 2023, the South Carolina House passed the Human Life Protection Act by an overwhelming vote of 83-31. It was the biggest victory for babies ever by members of the House of Representatives.
We know the Human Life Protection Act vote achieved overwhelming success because pro-life members of the S.C. House heard from you, their pro-life constituents. As grateful as we are for your help in the House, we need you again to help convince our 46 Senators to SAVE BABIES’ LIVES.
The Human Life Protection Act (H3774) is now in the S.C. Senate, where we are hearing some disturbing reports. Some senators say voters in South Carolina do not support the right to life for the unborn members of our human family. We need you to set the record straight!
In fact, if your senator hears from you and your pro-life friends, your senator will see a clear picture of how pro-life South Carolina truly is. We don’t want our beautiful state to be an abortion destination state – and sadly, right now, we are an abortion destination state.
Here is how you can make a difference for the unborn members of our human family waiting to be born in South Carolina. Contact your senator and tell him or her to VOTE FOR the Human Life Protection Act (H3774).
Tell your senator that right now 25 babies a day are dying from abortion in South Carolina, and this is not what we want in our beautiful state. Common sense tells us that if 25 children died every day of a single cause, such as child abuse, the General Assembly, the Governor, and the State Supreme Court would do whatever it takes to save children.
Why are 25 unborn babies dying every day in South Carolina? To answer that, we need to look at a timeline of pro-life laws and cases.
In 1973, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in all 50 states. As a result, from 1973 to 2021 there were a horrifying 414,782 abortions occurring in South Carolina. Nearly a half million unborn babies have died in the lucrative abortion businesses operating in our state.
Pro-Life South Carolinians knew we had to do something to save unborn babies and, in 1974 South Carolina Citizens for Life was incorporated. Our mission was – and still is -- to restore the RIGHT TO LIFE to our unborn brothers and sisters.
Over the years, South Carolina Citizens for Life organized statewide pro-life grassroots chapters to take action to SAVE BABIES’ LIVES. We followed a national strategy of passing every law we could pass that would save as many unborn babies' lives as possible and that would be upheld under the constraints of Roe v Wade.
Our first pro-life legislative victory was in 1990 when our General Assembly passed the Parental Consent Act. That law says an underage girl must have the consent of a parent, grandparent, or guardian to get an abortion. The next year, the number of abortions occurring in South Carolina declined by 16%, saving nearly 1000 unborn babies' lives.
Then, in 1994 the General Assembly passed the next two tremendously important pro-life laws: the Woman’s Right to Know Act and the Abortion Clinic Regulation Act. Before we passed the Abortion Clinic Regulation Act, an abortionist could take the bodies of aborted babies, grind them up in a sink disposal, and flush these human remains into the public water system. Yes. That occurred in South Carolina.
The grim and gruesome reality of the lack of clinic regulations was exposed by ABC News Channel 4 in Charleston, and you can see this outstanding piece of investigative journalism here on our website. Scroll down to the video and watch the documentary that resulted in the General Assembly passing the next two important pro-life laws in our state. WARNING: the video is graphic.
Subsequently, South Carolina Citizens for Life successfully supported passage of 16 pro-life laws that correlated with saving more than 202,000 babies’ lives. One of those laws was the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act that stopped abortion on demand at the point when science tells us the unborn child can feel excruciating pain, usually by 20 weeks of life in the womb.
The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act was a landmark pro-life law that stopped an abortionist’s legal right to kill unborn children up to the moment of birth.
Next, in 2021 the South Carolina General Assembly passed the most significant pro-life law to date, the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act. It protected the unborn children from abortion once their tiny heartbeats could be detected, generally at six weeks of prenatal life. Immediately, the abortion industry filed a lawsuit to keep our Heartbeat law from taking effect. We continued to protect the unborn at 20 weeks.
Then on June 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned the lethal Roe v Wade decision in a case called Dobbs v. Jackson. On June 27, the federal ban on our Heartbeat law was lifted and for the next 52 days, we saved nearly 1,000 babies’ lives. Abortions dropped from an average of 17 per day, to just under 5 per day.
The bloodthirsty Planned Parenthood was losing business. Now with the Dobb’s decision in place, the abortionists in South Carolina devised an argument that somehow the South Carolina Constitution’s right to privacy clause (that has nothing to do with abortion) protects a woman’s right to kill her unborn child. On January 5, 2023, our State Supreme Court, in a 3-2 ruling, agreed. You can read the opinion here.
Fortunately, that is not the end of the story. One of the three pro-abortion justices has retired and has been replaced by a justice who might uphold the Human Life Protection Act (H 3774) if the Senate will pass the legislation.