What I learned about abortion bans in South Carolina

Abortion laws are made and upheld by men. Organisations who are countering abortion access and organising prayer vigils are led by men. Healthcare services are run by men. Pregnancy happens with the participation of men. I don’t think men should tell women what to do with their bodies, nor do I think that men should leave the work of protecting and accessing abortion to women. That’s why I’m a man, writing about abortion.

For those of us interested in a more equal and just world, I think that reproductive justice is a critical part of that story. I’m writing this just a few weeks after visiting South Carolina and Missouri, two states that have majority Republican state legislatures and two states where most people have voted for Donald Trump in the last two Presidential elections.

I spent two weeks speaking to people who I think of as helpers – people who, despite living in states where people vote for politicians who want to roll back rights that have been hard fought for. That included advocates of reproductive justice, doctors, lawyers and academics.

When Roe vs Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in the United States in 2022, the constitutional right to abortion stopped existing – leaving decisions about whether a woman can have an abortion up to state legislatures. In anticipation of the decision to remove the constitutional right, thirteen states (Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming) all had trigger laws in place to remove abortion provision for women.  

South Carolina did not have a trigger law in place – instead, state representatives went to work to quickly pass a law that would see abortion provision made legal, only up to six weeks. After months of legal battles, the all-male Supreme Court of South Carolina upheld the six-week abortion ban in the state which came into effect in August 2023. Having spent the year acting as a place of safety and access for women from the surrounding states, South Carolinians found themselves with a ban in all but name of their own.

All of this despite 34% of Americans supporting access to abortion in all circumstances, and 51% of Americans supporting access to abortion under certain circumstances.

In South Carolina, I became more aware of what the reality of these abortion bans, which are not supported by a majority of people, is.

To have an abortion under the age of eighteen, young people need to get permission from their parents. For many different reasons, that might not be possible.

I met with Pat Forbis, a family law specialist who gives her time to support young women who need a judicial bypass. Taking time to get to know the young person, Pat supports them to make a case to a judge that they should be able to make the decision without parental involvement. That support, after the six-week ban, has been rendered almost redundant. Six weeks leaves little time for someone to realise that they are pregnant, find the kind of support that Pat offers, go through the legal process and find an appointment. Many of the young women that Pat would work with will be forced to give birth and deal with the consequences from a family they didn’t want to tell.

Allison Terracio is an elected County Councilwoman and the advocacy programs manager for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. Alison told me that the Planned Parenthood parking lot would previously have been filled with cars that had bumper plates from across the South – all people who were being denied healthcare where they were. With clinics now closed to all but a small number of abortions, it will be South Carolina bumper plates in car parks hundreds of miles away.

Although the ability to travel to get healthcare will depend on different factors. 60% of women who have an abortion already have children, so travelling out of state requires childcare or taking a child to an abortion appointment. The cost of travel or taking time off work is another consideration, with the Carolina Abortion Fund seeking to bridge the gap between the cost of healthcare and what someone can afford - the fund is stretched and unable to meet demand. And finding an appointment in a state where abortion is provided, albeit hundreds of miles away, is becoming harder with more people booking out appointments.

While it may not feel like access to abortion in Scotland is under political threat, I could see some crossovers between South Carolina and Scotland.

Last year, 65 women had to travel from Scotland to England to access care because it was not available where they live. From January to May of 2023, 35 women travelled to England to access services. The lack of availability may come from a different motivation, but we should be concerned that in the space of 18 months, 100 women had to travel hundreds of miles to get health care.

New statistics from the National Centre for Social Research show that support for abortion in the UK is even stronger than in the US, and that this support comes with similar conditions attached. People are more supportive of abortion when asked in the context of a health risk than when asked in the context of a woman not wishing to have a child.  I think that there is room for politicisation within these statistics and space for people with less progressive views to shift public opinion, in the way that new statistics on prejudice on trans rights have shown us is possible.

And from September until November 2023, the US based organisation 40 Days For Life will be holding a non-stop vigil outside abortion clinics in Scotland. They are praying and fasting because “some demons can only be driven out by prayer and fasting.”
Back Off Scotland, who refer to the vigils as protests and have said that sometimes upwards of 100 people have been present. A Doctor at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital asked members of 40 Days For Life to move on because they were causing upset to staff and patients – they did not. 

I hope, desperately, that what I saw and heard about in South Carolina is not a cautionary tale for Scotland. There are creeping behaviours present in Scotland, however, that politicians in America managed to harness to their advantage and make the unthinkable reality.

On the issue of abortion, we shouldn’t look at America in bewilderment. We should see it as a clear insight into what happens when the provision of basic services, and approaching each other based on compassion, becomes politicised by those with power.