DECEMBER 13, 2019 BY MICHAEL STONE
Brilliant: A new bill in South Carolina would compensate women forced to give birth under proposed “pro-life” forced-birth draconian legislation currently under consideration in the state.
Rewire News reports South Carolina State Senator Mia McLeod has pre-filed a bill that would require the state to compensate women forced to carry their pregnancies to term and give birth. The legislation comes as a response to South Carolina Fetal Heartbeat Protection from Abortion Act (H 3020) which would effectively ban abortion at six-weeks, often before a woman even knows that she’s pregnant.
The proposed legislation titled the South Carolina Pro Birth Accountability Act, is a clever attempt to demonstrate the moral and intellectual poverty entailed by the draconian legislation currently being advocated by the “pro-life” forced-birth crowd.
Writing for Rewire News, Imani Gandy notes:
The bill, SB 928, demands that anti-choice lawmakers in South Carolina who have proposed banning abortion at six weeks into pregnancy put their money where their mouth is: If lawmakers are going to force people to carry their pregnancies to term, and if they are going to deem the development of an unborn embryo as more important than the life and rights of pregnant people, then South Carolina should compensate them for acting as a gestational surrogate for the state of South Carolina.
The legislation would “require compensation of certain women giving birth to a child who but for a fetal heartbeat law to choose to terminate the pregnancy and for other purposes.”
Several key points of the proposed legislation include:
- Whereas, from a medical perspective, there is no dispute that a six-week-old embryo cannot exist outside of the womb; and
- Whereas, under a proposed law prohibiting abortion upon detection of a fetal heartbeat, the development of an unborn embryo is deemed governmentally more important than the life and rights of the pregnant women; and
- Whereas, if enacted, the fetal heartbeat law will force a pregnant woman who, could have otherwise elected an abortion, to act as a gestational surrogate for the state of South Carolina, which cannot itself physically conceive or carry a child; and
- Whereas, as a matter of constitutional law, a statement that force a citizen to serve in any capacity without fair payment or to take a citizen’s property without just compensation; and
- Whereas, in the surrogacy market, a woman’s uterus is not unlike rental property, as a commissioning couple agrees to pay a gestational surrogate certain compensation for carrying a fetus to term and giving birth to a child; and
- Whereas, just as South Carolina may not constitutionally use a citizen’s rental property without just compensation, it may not constitutionally require a woman to incubate a child without appropriate compensation…
In short, using the analogy of rental property or a gestational surrogate, the proposed legislation would compensate women forced to give birth if such draconian legislation like the proposed Fetal Heartbeat Act was codified into law.
Obviously, the preferred solution is to simply recognize that women are citizens with the right to bodily autonomy, and that every woman has the right to choose if and when they will carry a pregnancy to term. However, the legislation from South Carolina State Senator Mia McLeod is a brilliant rhetorical device to shine light on the moral and intellectual poverty of those demented conservatives who would force an individual to carry a fetus to term and give birth against their will.
Bottom line: A new bill in South Carolina would compensate women forced to give birth under proposed “pro-life” forced-birth draconian legislation currently under consideration in the state.
