Dear Editor,

South Carolina has always championed individual autonomy. Two recent examples: owning and carrying a firearm and refusing the COVID-19 Vaccination. It is therefore unimaginable that every female citizen in South Carolina can be forced to bear a child regardless of age or circumstances including rape or incest if the proposed Abortion Bill H.5399 is passed and encoded in our law. Yet if I am a male citizen of our state, I can impregnate a female with no financial or other legal state-mandated obligations. Further, as a male I can get a vasectomy and travel to another state to do it with absolute freedom.

Deciding to have a baby is one of the most profound decisions a South Carolina female and her family can make. Therefore, subjecting all South Carolina females to enduring an unwanted nine-month pregnancy should never be a government mandate. A pregnancy is at best costly, uncomfortable, personally difficult and involves a lifetime commitment to raising a child into adulthood.

If our South Carolina government makes all pregnancy losses (including the 12-20% of spontaneous miscarriages that end pregnancies without known cause) a crime subject to investigation, imprisonment and other punishments, every South Carolina female citizen will be subjected to legal interference throughout her life. In addition, the requirement to maintain a pregnancy can involve other personal threats to the female: death should she be refused an abortion despite medical complications, leaving other children motherless, loss of job and income, and spending the next 18 years with vast economic and daily personal responsibilities.

Another freedom that all South Carolina citizens enjoy as Americans is the right to seek appropriate medical care without directives from our legislators about what we can and cannot do, accompanied by punishment if we disobey them. If the H. 5399 is passed in our state, females alone will be deprived of our basic liberties: bodily autonomy, decision-making, appropriate medical care, and freedom of choice about our lives and families.

The League of Women Voters in Pickens and Oconee Counties encourages everyone reading this letter to address these issues with their state legislators. We cannot afford the personal and state-wide stress that will be caused by the current “abortion bill” H.5399.

Linda Gahan

President League of Women Voters

Oconee & Pickens Counties