NOTE: Below is an updated version of the original story that clarifies information about the bills involved in the discussion. We apologize for any confusion that may have been caused by the original version.
MAY 7, 2010 -- While some might not agree with state Sen. Lee Bright (R-Roebuck) on issues of abortion and government, few can doubt his willingness to take a beating.
Earlier this year, Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell (R-Charleston) spoke publicly and privately about his preference that the abortion issue not enter the Senate’s crowded end-of-session agenda, chock full of budget fights, Voter ID passage and hiking the cigarette tax.
Last month, McConnell took Bright to the woodshed for using Senate rules to bring an anti-abortion bill directly to the floor for debate that would calibrate the beginning of life at conception. By interjecting the abortion measure, Bright stalled debate on increasing the cigarette tax.
McConnell not only publicly railed on Bright’s maneuver of wedging the issue into the fray at a critical time, but on the perceived unconstitutionality of the bill as well. McConnell said the state should not spend precious time in a shortened session on passing a law that would be challenged in court, an expensive affair, and likely be struck down.
Bright dug in his heels and persevered. And to some extent, he has succeeded.
Anti-abortion bill in committee
The cigarette tax increase didn’t get through the process to be sent to the governor until this week. But another abortion bill Bright has championed, originating in the House last year, has made its way through the Senate and is now lodged in a conference committee agenda.
That bill would require women seeking an abortion to return to the doctor’s clinic 24 hours after reviewing an ultrasound.
How did Bright manage to get abortion to have so much traction over the objections of the single most powerful member of the Senate, and arguably of the legislature and even state government?
In short, it was Bright’s ability to take a beating that has helped keep abortion on the front burner. To move the conception bill forward, Bright attempted to take advantage of a Senate rule at just the right time that allows individual senators to push through bills come hell or high-water.
Bright attempted to leverage the Senate’s desire to get on with business (the cigarette tax) against McConnell’s antipathy for his original anti-abortion bill. In short, Bright tried to force the Senate to pass a bill he favored so it could get to the rest of its packed agenda.
That attempt failed and Bright’s “right to life” bill still languishes in subcommittee, according Sen. Jake Knotts (R-W. Columbia) the subcommittee chair.
The tradeoff – and what usually keeps senators from using the tactic – is what happens next: that such mavericks fall out of favor with Senate leaders, which impacts their abilities on other issues down the road. Bright knows he may continue paying, politically, for bucking McConnell, who has the power and the mastery of Senate rules to limit any individual senator’s bills or aspirations. But because of “the cause,” the back-bench Sanfordite said he’d do it all over again.
Softening, Bright also said this week he hoped that McConnell would grow to appreciate his stance, “having been a maverick in his own right when he (McConnell) first came into office.”
Priority of individuals, not body
House Speaker Bobby Harrell bristled at the suggestion that abortion had become a legislative priority over the last few weeks in the legislature. Harrell said it was “more an important issue to individual legislators, not the body as a whole.”
Harrell also pointed out the 24-hour bill was introduced last year and this session was the last of a two-year session, which likely helped increase legislators’ sense of urgency.
But those individuals’ concerns coalesced. Now an additional fight is brewing. The House included in its budget package earlier this year a provision that precluded the state’s health insurance policy from covering abortions.
According to several legislators and staffers, a total of six women covered by state insurance had abortions on the state dime last year. Despite low numbers, that didn’t sit well with several conservative members of the House, they said.
The Senate budget, which was passed last week and handed back to the House this week, included a similar exclusion, but tightened up the provision, allowing for state insurance coverage to extend to women when their lives were at risk or the inception was from rape or incest.
South Carolina is not the only state to be fighting the abortion wars this year. Oklahoma recently passed laws that not only require women to view sonograms with no exceptions for rape or incest, but stop them from suing doctors who withhold information about their pregnancies.
“God’s instrument of justice”
Bright has vowed to continue his fight. “I believe government should be God’s instrument of justice,” he said.
Some Statehouse observers said Bright’s ferocity was endemic of his political clique, the so-called William Wallace Caucus, a group of Republican social and fiscal conservatives loyal to Gov. Mark Sanford.
Bright said the fuel for the fight did not come from the individuals, but from the issue. “It’s more about what we believe; we’re like an insurgency,” he said.
Bright welcomed the move to cut state insurance payouts on abortion in general, though he hadn’t fought for it, because it would “save lives.”
Bright said he was pinning his hopes for the 24-hour waiting period bill on his back-bench buddy, and fellow caucus member, Sen. Kevin Bryant (R-Anderson), who was selected as one of the three Senate appointees to that bill’s conference committee.
Knotts, who also serves on the conference committee, said there was enough time left in the session to get a bill out. But, Knotts said, for the bill to advance, the House position would need to soften, especially on the issue of danger to the mother’s life.
“Look, I’m a selfish man,” said Knotts. “I have two daughters and a wife that I love very much. I have a lot ‘invested’ in them; I think there better some way to protect the safety of the lives of my daughters and my granddaughter.
“And, if I had a choice between my wife or my daughter’s life and something I’d never held before, I’d pick them every time.”
Crystal ball: The 24-hour waiting period bill will die in conference committee, according to several legislators. But that doesn’t mean the fight is over. Bright said he will give the senator who first filed the bill a chance to re-file next year. If he doesn’t, Bright said he will throw himself into the gap yet again, and pre-file it. And then potentially take his next trip out to the woodshed.