Lawmakers in South Carolina are fast-tracking Senate Bill 323 (S. 323), the state’s most extreme abortion ban proposal to date. If passed, S. 323 would exacerbate South Carolina’s already restrictive and harmful abortion ban. The dangers include (but are certainly not limited to) the criminalization of patients, providers, and helpers; incentivizing the targeting of a pregnant person through civil penalties; potentially chilling access to contraception and fertility care; unnecessary regulation of “non-emergency premature delivery after nineteen weeks of pregnancy;” blocking access to care for young people; and blocking information about health care.  

NWLC submitted written testimony in opposition to S. 323. The focus of NWLC’s testimony is twofold: (1) some of the harm S. 323 would cause South Carolinians; and (2) one of the ways S. 323 is contrary to federal law.