SC women who are forced to have a child should be compensated, senator proposes

Women who are forced to carry out pregnancies in South Carolina due to the state’s recently enacted six-week abortion ban would be compensated under a newly filed bill in the state Senate.

The caveat: The same bill has failed twice in the past.

Sen. Mia McLeod, I-Richland, filed the “pro-birth accountability act” on Nov. 30 with a slew of other pre-filed bills ahead of the upcoming legislative session. There have not been any other pre-filed bills relating to abortion or the six-week ban so far.

“I see it as an opportunity for legislators who say they’re pro-life to prove it,” said McLeod, one of five women in the South Carolina Senate.

While South Carolina was ranked the cheapest state for raising a child, the average annual cost of raising a child in South Carolina is still $169,000, according to Lending Tree.

McLeod said she based the bill and previous versions on the premise of the so-called Takings Clause, or Just Compensation Clause, of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states the government can’t take private property for public use without compensation.

If a woman were to go to a gestational surrogate to have a baby for her, she would have to pay that gestational surrogate, McLeod said.

“What we never talk about are the actual expenses that are associated with pregnancy and childbirth and child rearing,” McLeod said. “It’s not right for the state to mandate that women and girls give birth and deal with the actual and anticipated expenses that are associated with that.”

The bill’s exact language states, “whereas, in the surrogacy market, a woman’s uterus is not unlike rental property, as a commissioning couple agrees to pay a gestational surrogate certain compensation for carrying a fetus to term and giving birth to a child; and whereas, just as South Carolina may not constitutionally use a citizen’s rental property without just compensation, it may not constitutionally require a woman to incubate a child without appropriate compensation.”

Vicki Ringer, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said McLeod’s proposal is a novel approach and, under the current circumstances, totally warranted.

“If we’re going to require people to carry pregnancies to term, which can be dangerous and life threatening, and then take care of it for the rest of its life, then the state ought to carry a great deal of responsibility for that,” Ringer said. “It’s only fair.”

Ringer said oftentimes people who seek an abortion already have a child, and so they know what is required in order to care for one.

Under McLeod’s proposal, there would not be a specific amount of money allotted to to individuals, but the amount would will vary depending on the needs of individuals, the senator said.

McLeod said she hopes there will be a “much bigger appetite” for this bill now than in the past because the fetal heartbeat law is now a reality.

South Carolina’s six-week abortion ban went into effect Aug. 23. While the governor signed the bill into law in May, it was temporarily blocked by a judge, sending it to the newly all-male state Supreme Court after the only female justice, Kaye Hearn, retired. The Supreme Court ruled 4-1 to uphold the law.

This story was originally published December 7, 2023 at 5:30 AM.