Gov. McMaster says agreement on tighter abortion restrictions in SC ‘might take some time’

As South Carolina Republicans remain split over further restrictions to abortion access, Gov. Henry McMaster reiterated that he wants to sign a bill this year.

But the Republican governor, who is up for reelection for a second term in November against Democrat Joe Cunningham, said what crosses his desk for his signature has to be “the right bill,” conceding he’d sign the right one “whenever it gets here” and noted that it “might take some time.”

“I think they’re (the Legislature) going to produce in the end,” McMaster told The State newspaper Friday in an interview at his State House office. “I’m not sure when that’s going to be, but I think in the end they will produce a reasonable bill that will be acceptable to the vast majority of people in this state.”

Yet what that final bill looks like is still up in the air, and it’s become unlikely legislators will be able to hammer out a compromise before Nov. 8 given their major differences over how far restrictions should go.

The Legislature’s debate over whether to enact further abortion restrictions comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and gave states more power to decide whether abortions should be legal within their borders.

On Tuesday, the Republican-dominated Senate will return to Columbia to make one decision: Either agree to the House’s near-total abortion ban version of the bill, with limited and narrow exceptions, or insist on their Senate version, triggering negotiations, that would allow abortions up until around the six-week mark of pregnancy, or when a fetal heartbeat is present, with also limited but more exceptions.

Senate President Thomas Alexander, R-Oconee, said last month, after the House rejected the Senate’s version of the bill, that the prospect of restricting abortion access further this year now is ”almost impossible” because of the differences between the two chambers.

And in an emailed legislative update sent Friday by Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, the Edgefield Republican and self-described “pro-life” senator further cleared up the bill’s chances of passing.

Massey, who supports an abortion ban but ultimately voted for the Senate version of the bill last month after Republicans failed to find enough support for a near-total ban, said the House version “likely endangers” the state’s current abortion restrictions and he therefore “cannot support that.”

That hasn’t stopped anti-abortion groups, weeks and days before the Senate returns, trying to lobby Republican senators to support the House version as some House Republican leaders have expressed hope they can find a compromise across the State House.

Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court is scheduled to start oral arguments Wednesday over whether the state’s six-week or so-called “fetal heartbeat” law, passed in 2021 and which bans abortion after a heartbeat is detected with some exceptions, is constitutional under the state’s right to privacy.

The law remains temporarily blocked by the S.C. Supreme Court.

“I think the ‘heartbeat’ bill was an excellent bill. That showed great movement right there,” McMaster said Friday. “We still have the ‘heartbeat bill’ and that seems to roughly incorporate the pain capable at 20 weeks part of that, and I hope the Supreme Court will agree that is a constitutional bill under the state Constitution.”

SC GOP lawmakers split over abortion restrictions

The House and Senate versions of H. 5399 include exceptions for rape and incest up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, with a reporting requirement, and an exception for the mother’s life. However, with the addition of banning the procedure past six weeks, the Senate added an exception for fatal fetal anomaly.

McMaster has said the state’s six-week law, which includes exceptions for sexual assault, the mother’s life and fetal fetal anomaly, is reasonable. Critics of the law have long argued that most women do not know they’re pregnant at six weeks.

When asked Friday whether he could sign a bill that didn’t include an exception for fatal fetal anomaly — an addition absent in the House’s version of the bill — McMaster said he didn’t want to get into many of the details.

“The question is what would most of the people of the state think about that?” McMaster said. “What you or what I think is not the question. The question is what would be satisfactory to most of the people of the state? And I think that’s where we’re going to end up. It might be a bumpy road getting there.”

Polling on abortion access in South Carolina has produced mixed results.

A survey by Public Policy Polling, and released in July by Planned Parenthood, showed 61% of South Carolinians want abortion legal in the state. A Winthrop University Poll of people in the 11 southern states, conducted in August, said 59% supported abortions if the fetus is likely to be born with severe disabilities or health problems.

Another survey by Republican pollster Trafalgar Group in August reported 19.7% of likely general election South Carolina voters said they are OK with abortions up to the first six weeks of pregnancy, and 28% say abortion should be legal in the first and second trimester. An additional 41.3% said they were OK with exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.

The governor acknowledged Friday the debate over further abortion restrictions has exposed divisions within the State House, particularly among Republicans.

In the House, the House Republican Caucus — Republicans make up 80 members to 43 Democrats — could not agree over adding exceptions for sexual assault and ultimately added those exceptions after a nearly two-hour closed-door meeting.

And in the Senate, where Republicans hold 30 seats to the Democrats’ 16, Republicans failed to find enough support to ban abortions at conception, ultimately voting on a bill that would only narrow the state’s six-week law.

“I don’t know if either party is 100% united on that issue because there are a lot of strong feelings on that issue and (there) have been for a long time, and that’s clear from the conversations we hear today,” McMaster said.

“I’d like to sign one (a bill) this year, but I’d like to sign the right one, whenever it gets here. The sooner the better,” he added.