Rarely do you see a piece of legislation that does all the things. But a bill proposed by South Carolina State Senator Mia McLeaod is such a law. SB 928 looks at the pro-life movement, last seen righteously treating women as little more than incubators with mouthparts, and challenges them to put some money behind their repeated attempts to burden women with unwanted pregnancies.
Imani Gandy on Rewire has the details:
The bill, SB 928, demands that anti-choice lawmakers in South Carolina who have proposed banning abortion at six weeks into pregnancy put their money where their mouth is: If lawmakers are going to force people to carry their pregnancies to term, and if they are going to deem the development of an unborn embryo as more important than the life and rights of pregnant people, then South Carolina should compensate them for acting as a gestational surrogate for the state of South Carolina.
The law points out that given the surrogacy market, a pregnant person’s uterus is not unlike a rental property: People who commission surrogates pay that surrogate to carry a fetus to term and to give birth to a child. So why should South Carolina be permitted to force its citizens to act as surrogates for the state without compensating them?
I LOVE the legal argument here: IF Republicans are determined to treat a live woman like she’s merely a halfway house for Jesus, THEN we should pay the damn rent. We have a well established legal and market structure around surrogacy, and applying those rules to a situation where the state is forcing a woman to carry a baby against her will seems like the perfectly “market-based solution” to the economic problem of literal forced labor, while we still debate the moral problem of the pro-life position.
Of course, since this bill is proposed by a Democrat, it does not stop — as Republicans often do — with being “pro-life” right up until the point that the baby is alive.
If the pregnant person becomes disabled as the result of carrying the fetus to term, then the state must cover all medical expenses associated with the disability. Similarly, if the child is born with a congenital abnormality or disability, the state must cover all medical expenses associated with that disability for the rest of the child’s life.
Also, South Carolina would be required to cover all costs associated with health, dental, and vision insurance until the child turns 18. And if the biological father of the child is unknown or unable to provide support, then the state must provide child support in the biological father’s stead.
I don’t believe that the state should force a woman to carry a baby against her will. But if it does, the state has to pay for it. It has to pay for ALL of it. This bill is the most intellectually consistent “pro-life” proposal I’ve ever seen.
I’m sure that this bill will pass the South Carolina legislature with near unanimous support… unless of course it turns out that the people pushing anti-abortion laws are drooling hypocrites who don’t give one damn about the life and health of the baby, but instead only care about sexual domination of women and the denial of equal human rights. This bill right here is the ultimate hypocrisy check on the entire pro-life movement.
Groundbreaking South Carolina Bill: Compensate People for Forcing Them to Give Birth [Rewire]
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.