Moderates add exceptions to South Carolina abortion ban bill

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A group of moderate senators restored exceptions for rape and incest on Tuesday to a measure to ban nearly all abortions in South Carolina, sending the bill to the state Senate floor for a potential 2020 election year fight.

The exceptions may be crucial for the bill to have any chance to pass. A proposal to ban abortions without them failed last year in South Carolina's Republican-dominated Senate.

Similar bills have passed in recent years in Louisiana, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio. Missouri approved a ban on abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy and Alabama lawmakers simply outlawed all abortions. All of them remain tied up in courts.

The Senate floor is the last hurdle for South Carolina's "Fetal Heartbeat Protection from Abortion Act," which would make almost all abortions illegal once fetal cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks after conception. The bill has always allowed an abortion if the mother's life is in danger.

It easily passed the House in April once the rape and incest exceptions were added, and Gov. Henry McMaster has said he will sign it no matter what.

But a small group of the South Carolina Senate's most conservative Republicans had removed the exceptions two months ago from the bill that passed the House and more moderate Republicans warned that would doom it. They prevailed Tuesday, with three Republicans on the Senate Medical Affairs Committee joining six Democrats in refusing to advance the bill as written, which allowed the exceptions to be restored.

The Republicans flipped back to then pass the changed bill on a 9-6 party line vote.

Even with the rape and incest exceptions restored, the bill faces an uncertain future next year because some more moderate Republicans senators don't want to...