SC senators threaten walkout over controversial conversion therapy, abortion bills
Two South Carolina senators successfully stalled controversial bills on conversion therapy and abortion restrictions after threatening to walk out of a committee meeting Thursday morning.
State Sens. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, and Sandy Senn, R-Charleston, threatened to leave the Senate’s Medical Affairs Committee, leaving the committee chairman with five of its 17 members present.
Without a majority of the committee present, Chairman Danny Verdin, R-Laurens, said any vote taken by the committee would fall under scrutiny of the full Senate.
“Senator, you’re going to put me in a hard place,” Verdin told Hutto, the Senate minority leader.
“These are some of the most controversial bills on the agenda,” Verdin continued. “What I don’t want to risk is an obvious lack of quorum to be making reports back to the Senate. I’m not going to risk the time, energy or the reputation of the committee to have this work challenged on the floor.”
South Carolina already blocks abortion procedures, with exceptions, at 20 weeks of pregnancy. Last year, the Republican-led Legislature successfully passed legislation aiming to block abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, or when a fetal heartbeat is detected. A court has since blocked that law from taking effect, as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban that is a direct challenge to the 1973 case Roe v. Wade.
Two Republican senators want the state to go further.
One bill would ban abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, with the exception of extreme cases when the mother’s life is in serious danger. There would be no exceptions for rape or incest.
The other proposal would require doctors to give patients getting the abortion pill a paper explaining the effects could be reversed if the patient changes their mind after taking the first pill. Multiple OB-GYN doctors told lawmakers in January the bill would force them to provide inaccurate information.
Hutto — who in 2018 successfully helped kill an anti-abortion bill that would have banned virtually all abortions performed in South Carolina — and Senn blocked both proposals from moving forward Thursday.
They also successfully stalled another controversial from moving forward, this one aimed at tackling a ban on conversion therapy for minors enacted by the city of Columbia.
The bill also would allow doctors to refuse care based on a doctor’s religious or moral beliefs, meaning that doctors could refuse to provide gender affirming care to a transgender or nonbinary person. Doctors also could be shielded from lawsuits for not providing care they disagree with, under the legislation.
With the threat of a walk out, the committee moved on to legislation with bipartisan support.
“In the minority,” Hutto said, “we don’t have a lot of cards to play. But when we have cards to play, it’s not fair to ask us not to play it.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2022 at 11:45 AM with the headline "SC senators threaten walkout over controversial conversion therapy, abortion bills."
