South Carolina Republican State Representative Rob Harris requested a hearing on the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act once state lawmakers return to Columbia next year.

The legislation, which would “protect the lives of preborn persons with the same criminal and civil laws protecting the lives of born persons,” never received a hearing this year. Harris called on South Carolina Republican State Representative Weston Newton, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, to hold a hearing in the first seven days of the session starting in January.

The lawmaker noted that his legislation would “provide equal protection for the most vulnerable lives in South Carolina” and cautioned that “babies are being aborted on a horrific scale” even under the current South Carolina heartbeat law, which was passed more than two years ago.

The statute allows abortions through six weeks, and through twelve weeks in cases such as rape, incest, and fetal anomalies. South Carolina abortion law also provides blanket immunity for women who willfully murder their preborn babies, meaning they can ignore the gestational age limits if they choose to self-induce their abortions through methods such as abortion pills.

One analysis from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion warned that over 15,000 abortions were conducted by South Carolina residents in 2023: more than 4,800 babies were murdered in the state, another 1,500 were murdered with abortion pills, and 8,700 were murdered out of state.

Harris noted that the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act remains the “only bill consistent” with the commands of God “to not murder and to not show partiality in judgment.”

The lawmaker added that the bill is also consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which requires states to provide equal protection of the laws to all persons within their jurisdictions, as well as with the platform of the South Carolina Republican Party, which says “human life has intrinsic worth and should be legally protected at all stages.”

South Carolina conservative activists have frequently voiced frustration with the Republican establishment in their state, which has subverted previous iterations of the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act, as well as other legislation broadly favored by conservatives.