Since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled a half century of precedent supporting the constitutional right to abortion access, numerous states have moved towards making abortion illegal and restricting additional reproductive health services.
In South Carolina, Republican state Senators Richard Cash, Rex F. Rice and Daniel B. Verdin III introduced Senate Bill 1373 seeking to criminalize abortions. The bill would have also made it a crime to “aid, abet, or conspire with someone to procure an abortion,” which includes “providing information to a pregnant woman…by telephone, internet, or any other mode of communication” and “hosting or maintaining an internet website, providing access to an internet website, or providing an internet service purposefully directed to a pregnant woman…that provides information on how to obtain an abortion.”
EFF joined others in opposition to the bill, including Advocates for Youth, Center for Democracy & Technology, Chamber of Progress, EducateUS, LGBT Tech, National Women’s Law Center, PEN America, and SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change. Earlier this month, Governor Henry McMaster said the bill’s restrictions on speech are “not going to see the light of day.”
“Everyone has a constitutional right of the First Amendment to say things, to speak,” McMaster said, according to The State (Columbia, SC).
This is good news. But this bill is based on a model from the National Right to Life Coalition, which is looking to introduce it other states. It represents a multi-faceted attack on reproductive rights and freedom of expression which exacerbates the existing challenges that pregnant people face when trying to find reliable information about safe reproductive health care. By making it a felony to discuss abortions online, the model bill’s drafters
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