Leaked ruling puts abortion at center of an all-female US House race in South Carolina
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Abortion in South Carolina
In a historial move, the Supreme Court of the U.S. has overturned landmark ruling Roe v. Wade. Read more about what that means for South Carolina abortion laws.
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In a U.S. House race where all of the candidates on the ballot are mothers, Democrat Annie Andrews is making abortion a central issue in the contest for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District.
Andrews, a Charleston pediatrician who is the Democratic Party’s nominee in the race to represent the Lowcountry in Washington, called on Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace to unequivocally state her position on abortion after Gov. Henry McMaster said he would support a complete ban on abortions without exceptions for the life of the mother or for women who are victims of rape or incest.
“The women of the First Congressional District deserve to know if Nancy Mace would support this radical policy,” Andrews said of Mace, a former state lawmaker from Daniel Island.
Reached by phone Thursday morning, Mace said neither the governor’s latest comments nor recent tweets from Republican challenger Katie Arrington have changed her mind about exceptions for abortion.
“I always have been pro-life with those exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. That has not changed,” Mace said.
The renewed focus on abortion shows how the issue is quickly rising in political contests nationwide, especially in the South where governors and lawmakers have vowed to further restrict or totally ban abortions after a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion this week suggested the high court is ready to strike down Roe v. Wade.
News that a majority of Supreme Court justices could be preparing this summer to overturn the landmark 1973 decision that ensured a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion was first reported by Politico.
In her statement, Andrews questioned whether Mace’s stance on abortion had changed after McMaster came out in support of a total abortion ban with no exceptions.
While serving the State House, Mace gave a pair of 10-minute floor speeches in which she advocated for the inclusion of exceptions for rape and incest in a proposed six-week “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban bill.
During that debate, Mace went to the well, where she shared publicly for the first time that she had been raped when she was 16.
“She has previously stated she would not support an abortion ban without exceptions,” Andrews said in her statement. “Is this still her position or has Katie Arrington scared her into reversing yet another position in hopes of saving her political career?”
Mace is in the middle of an intensifying Republican primary fight, where her chief rival for the GOP nomination is Arrington, a former state lawmaker from Summerville who also served with Mace in the State House.
This week, Arrington said in a tweet that “abortion is murder” and suggested Mace’s support of exceptions makes her “complicit.”
“Anyone in favor of exceptions, Nancy Mace included, are complicit in the systematic killing of millions of unborn babies. I am 100% pro-life with no exceptions,” Arrington wrote.
Last year, McMaster signed the “fetal heartbeat” bill to ban abortions after a heartbeat is detected, which usually happens around six weeks into a pregnancy. Critics argue that is often before most women know they are even pregnant.
In an interview, Mace noted that, at the time of the bill’s passage, South Carolina was the only state in the country with a “fetal heartbeat” bill that included those exceptions for the life of the mother, rape and incest.
The state’s six-week ban is currently on hold after a federal court issued an injunction, stopping the law from being enforced.
While Mace’s support for exceptions to abortion in cases of rape and incest puts her in lockstep with the position of every GOP president from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, it appears Mace’s comments could make her the outlier in her own Republican primary.
Lynz Piper-Loomis, the other Republican candidate challenging Mace for the GOP nomination, said this week that she does not believe in any exceptions for abortion, whether it’s rape, incest or the life of the mother.
“I believe that life begins at conception, absolutely. No exceptions,” Piper-Loomis said in a video message posted to her social media accounts this week.
How will abortion impact the race?
Jordan Ragusa, a political scientist at the College of Charleston, said it is too early to say what impact a possible Supreme Court ruling to reverse the legalization of abortion could have on this year’s election.
Typically, he said, abortion has been a mobilizing issue for Republicans — not Democrats. Plus, there are other factors at play.
“Midterms are pretty regular affairs. If you go back 100 years, it’s more or less always the case that the president’s party loses seats in a midterm election, and the three cases where that didn’t happen were historically anomalous,” Ragusa said.
Those contests happened in 1934, when Democrats gained seats in midterms in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first term; in 2002, after the 9/11 terrorist attack; and in 1998 after the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
“The question now is whether overturning Roe v. Wade is historically unique like those other three events, and it certainly could be. It’s a wildcard,” Ragusa said. “It’s hard to say how this plays out, and whether it benefits Republicans or benefits Democrats, but it does inject a degree of variability that should worry Republicans only because they have the most to lose. Anyone who pays attention knows Republicans are in great position heading into the midterms. This has the potential to upend it.”
The Republican primary is set for June 14.
This story was originally published May 5, 2022 at 2:42 PM with the headline "Leaked ruling puts abortion at center of an all-female US House race in South Carolina."
