South Carolina Republican Rep Gives Emotional Comments Against Abortion Ban Bills
South Carolina state representative Neal Collins delivered emotional comments about the real-life effects the state’s “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban has had on women during a House Judiciary Committee meeting in Columbia on August 16.
Collins, a Republican, voted in favor of the South Carolina Fetal Heartbeat and Protection From Abortion Act, which bans all abortions after six weeks when a heartbeat is detected in the fetus. The bill was signed into law in February 2021 and went into effect on June 27, 2022, after a federal judge lifted an injunction blocking enforcement, local reports said.
Collins began by reciting statistics about women’s health and maternal mortality rates in South Carolina, which consistently ranks among the worst in the United States, before describing the case of a 19-year-old woman who was denied an abortion for an unviable fetus and discharged from the hospital due to the state’s fetal heartbeat bill.
Collins said he was contacted by a local doctor who told him about the case.
“First, she’s going to pass this fetus in the toilet. She’s going to have to deal with that on her own. There’s a 50-percent chance — greater than 50-percent chance that she’s going to lose her uterus. There’s a 10-percent chance that she will develop sepsis and herself die. That weighs on me. I voted for that bill and we’re having a meeting on this…. That whole week I did not sleep,” Collins said.
“Out of respect for the process, I’m not voting today. But I want it to be clear that myself and many others are not in a position to vote for this bill without significant changes to the bill,” Collins said.
Collins’s comments came during a South Carolina House Judiciary Committee meeting on South Carolina House Bill 5399, which would amend South Carolina’s code of laws to prohibit abortions in the state, with no exceptions for rape or incest. The House Judiciary Committee voted to advance the bill to the House floor. Collins and several others abstained. Storyful's Angelina Fay has the story.
Credit: South Carolina State House via Storyful

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