Bill banning vaccine mandates, limiting remedies SC could offer in future pandemics advances
COLUMBIA — Legislation that would ban South Carolina businesses from requiring COVID vaccines and restrict what the state’s public health agency could provide in future pandemics advanced Wednesday in the state Senate, despite opposition that included the state Chamber of Commerce.
The proposal sponsored by Sen. Shane Martin would greatly expand on a law signed two years ago that bars vaccine mandates by public employers. It threatens to send violating employers to prison.
It would also limit what the state could buy, store, distribute and/or administer in a public health emergency. Public health officials could provide only vaccines and treatments fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Those with emergency use authorization, as the COVID vaccines had, would be specifically disallowed.
Martin, a Spartanburg County Republican, told his fellow senators he wants to “protect myself and all my constituents” from the “draconian and often compulsory measures” enacted by the White House and government bureaucrats between 2020 and 2022 as a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. He presented his bill as guaranteeing future freedom.
One of the panel’s two Democrats noted that could cost lives.
“If we’re in another pandemic… in terms of us being denied access to a vaccine that saves lives, we can’t turn back the hands of time and bring those persons back,” said Sen. Ronnie Sabb, D-Greeleyville.
Both Martin’s bill, along with another one that would renew a more limited anti-vaccine-mandate law signed in 2022, advanced on 3-2 votes on partisan lines.
The 2022 law barred state and local governments from requiring COVID vaccinations for their employees, contractors or, in the case of K-12 schools and colleges, their students. But it automatically expired at the end of 2023. The new proposal authored by Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, would have no sunset provision.
The subcommittee chairman, Tom Corbin, R-Travelers Rest, told the SC Daily Gazette he was pleased with his panel’s work.
“I felt like it was my job to move the bill along,” he said about the bill he’s co-sponsoring, noting the meeting lasted for three hours. “There’s ample opportunity to amend it as we go forward.”
Possible prison time for employers
Martin’s bill wouldn’t bar all vaccine requirements. Instead, it says employers can’t require employees to get a “novel vaccine,” defined as any vaccine not fully approved by the FDA or those licensed within the last 10 years.
Under the bill, public and private employers who mandate a “novel vaccine” could be punished by a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison on first offense. A third conviction would be punishable by up to a $5,000 fine and five years in prison.
Bob Morgan, president and CEO of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, said such harsh penalties represent government overreach that’s no better than the mandates issued by the Biden administration before the U.S. Supreme Court struck them down.
“South Carolina has a long and proud position of allowing private-sector employers to run their businesses without excessive governmental interference,” he said. “At the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, we believe that government should let businesses do business by letting them run their operations as they deem fit.”
The Republican senators on the committee were unmoved.
“If we were to do what you would want, that would leave the employee at the mercy of an employer in the situation of a novel vaccine or gene therapy, of ‘you’re going to take this vaccine or lose your job,’” said Sen. Richard Cash of Anderson County.
The bill also limits how authorities can respond to public health emergencies, to include limiting their ability to require people to quarantine. It also limits pharmacists’ ability to refuse to fill a prescription.
Cash said he was concerned about pharmacists not filling prescriptions for ivermectin — an anti-parasitic drug that was sometimes prescribed experimentally to treat COVID-19, despite the FDA saying it was not effective as a treatment and could be dangerous in some circumstances.
“A lot of people, if they got the doctor’s prescription, they couldn’t get ivermectin,” said the Powdersville Republican. “We intend to rectify that problem.”
Brian Clark, CEO of the South Carolina Pharmacy Association, objected to the broad restrictions, saying the proposal could cost pharmacists money if they can’t decline to fulfil a prescription because insurance won’t reimburse them or because of liability issues.
Clark, of Chapin, told senators he personally filled prescriptions for ivermectin, but he believed that pharmacists should not be mandated to provide any specific kind of care.
“Pharmacists have gone to school for a long time and deserve the right to exercise their professional judgment,” he said.
Amanda Hovis, a physician’s assistant from Spartanburg, testified in support of both bills.
“That is not the right of a business to force any type of medication onto another person,” she said.
The subcommittee also advanced a resolution calling on Congress and the president to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization. The proposal carries no legal weight and advanced without debate or testimony, despite an objection from Sabb.
Abraham Kenmore is a reporter covering elections, health care and more. He joins the SC Daily Gazette from The Augusta Chronicle, where he reported on Georgia legislators, military and housing issues.
ANOTHER HEALTH RELATED ISSUE GOES TO THE GOVERNMENT:
Bill banning hormones for transgender youth advances to Senate floor fight
BY: SKYLAR LAIRD
SC Daily Gazette - FEBRUARY 29, 2024 2:20 PM
COLUMBIA — A bill banning puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy for transgender youth advanced Thursday after senators re-inserted a parental notification requirement.
A 10-6 vote by the Senate Medical Affairs Committee, along party lines, sent the amended bill to the Senate floor.
Senators made few changes to the legislation pushed swiftly through the House in mid-January.
Medical professionals would still face the possibility of losing their medical license for prescribing puberty-blocking medications and so-called “cross-sex” hormones to minors younger than 18.
Supporters say they’re protecting children from potentially harmful effects of a decision made in their youth. Opponents say the bill would increase already high rates of mental health issues among transgender youth.
But there is one key difference between the chambers’ versions so far.
Most of Thursday’s debate involved mandating school administrators to notify parents if their child asks a teacher or other school employee to be called a different name or use different pronouns.
On the House side, that provision was removed during the committee process. An attempt by the uber-conservative Freedom Caucus to add it back in during that chamber’s floor fight was rejected after House Majority Leader Davey Hiott took the podium. Married to a teacher, the Pickens Republican lambasted the idea he said would add yet more unnecessary, unwanted burdens on teachers who just want to teach.
Sen. Deon Tedder, D-Charleston, made much the same argument.
While the state struggles to fully staff its schools, this adds another burden for teachers who are already overworked, he said.
“It’s already tough enough to simply teach a class of students, and now they have to be tasked with notifying parents and telling them personal issues,” Tedder said.
Republican Sen. Sandy Senn joined Democrats in voicing concerns about the parental reporting provision.
Telling parents who may not support their child identifying as a different gender could, in some cases, result in the parent abusing or neglecting their child, the Charleston Republican said.
“Those who try to hide it from their parents probably have good reason for that,” said Senn, who ultimately voted to advance the bill despite those concerns.
Sen. Richard Cash, a father of eight, countered that parents should know right away if their child is identifying as another gender, so they can handle that at home.
“Whatever your response, I’d think that any parent, on either side of the issue, would want to know that their child is identifying as something other than their biological sex,” said the Anderson County Republican.
Both versions ban teachers and administrators from encouraging or coercing students to lie to their parents about their gender identity. However, as House and Senate Democrats have pointed out, the bill provides no way to enforce that.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau.
Bi-partisan legislation seeks to guarantee IVF protections in SC
Legislators say the preventive measures will ensure nothing in the future jeopardizes the fertility treatments
BY: ABRAHAM KENMORE
SC Daily Gazette - FEBRUARY 29, 2024 5:11 PM
COLUMBIA — Legislation intending to ensure in vitro fertilization remains an option for South Carolina women trying to get pregnant was introduced this week as a reaction to an Alabama court ruling that put IVF programs there on hold.
Bills introduced in both the House and Senate, mostly by Democrats, explicitly protect the fertility treatments, though there is nothing in South Carolina currently that puts them in jeopardy.
“We know what happened in Alabama. My second child, who is 15 ½, was the result of in vitro fertilization,” Rep. Beth Bernstein, D-Columbia, told reporters. “This bill ensures that no matter what — if someone says it’s not going to happen here — this will ensure it’s not going to happen here.”
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Feb. 16 that frozen embryos produced as part of the IVF process are legally considered children, causing IVF clinics across the state to shutter as they worked out the legal implications.
Lawmakers in Alabama have moved swiftly to protect IVF and reopen programs. Both the House and Senate in Alabama passed bills aimed at doing so Thursday afternoon.
The Alabama case stemmed from an accident at a fertility clinic that destroyed frozen embryos. The ruling allowed couples to sue the clinic and hospital for wrongful death of a child under an 1872 state law.
There has been no similar court ruling in South Carolina and no known legal challenge. South Carolina lawmakers said they want to avoid any future possibility.
“But for IVF, my family would not have had the opportunity to expand,” said Rep. Kambrell Garvin, D-Blythewood. “I am grateful for modern advancements in technology that enabled me to have one of the most important titles today, and that’s ‘dad.’”
Garvin held up a photo of his daughter as an embryo, which he and his wife were given after she was conceived through IVF. It normally hangs in his daughter’s room, he said.
His one-paragraph bill, co-sponsored by 13 Democrats and three Republicans, doesn’t actually use the words in vitro fertilization or IVF. Instead, it says “any fertilized human egg or human embryo that exists in any form outside of the uterus of a human body shall not, under any circumstance, be considered an unborn child.”
“There are many members of this chamber, both Democrat and Republican who have benefited from IVF,” he said. “So, I think there may be enough folks who will propel these bills that protect IVF in our state.”
Bi-partisan legislation introduced Wednesday in the Senate adds language declaring it the state’s policy to “protect and promote equitable access to the full range of assistive reproductive technologies,” which specifically includes “in vitro fertilization, egg, embryo, or sperm cryopreservation, egg or embryo donation, and gestational surrogacy.”
Penry Gustafson, R-Camden, said the issue is not a partisan one and should not get tied into the Legislature’s fights over ending abortions.
“This is a preventative measure, so that treatment centers won’t be closing,” said Gustafson, among two Republicans, three Democrats, and one Independent co-sponsoring the Senate bill.
Alabama is among states across the South where legislators have nearly completely banned abortions. The ruling has raised concerns about the practical implications of laws that extend legal rights to fetuses from conception.
So-called “personhood” bills have been repeatedly rejected in South Carolina, where abortions are banned at roughly six weeks under a law upheld by the state Supreme Court last August. There is nothing in that law concerning IVF treatments.
Rep. John McCravy, R-Greenwood, said it’s a moot issue in South Carolina that’s being confused with abortion bans.
He said the Family Caucus, which he leads, intends to again pursue legislation next year that would ban abortions from the outset of a pregnancy — mirroring the bill with very limited exceptions that passed the House but was repeatedly rejected in the Senate. McCravy, one of the Legislature’s staunchest abortion foes, noted his bill specified that IVF treatments were allowed. In pledging to introduce it again after the November elections, he said he intends to protect IVF.
“We will continue to monitor the Alabama legislation and if we need to add language to protect the practice of ethical IVF we will do so,” he said in a statement.
Abraham Kenmore is a reporter covering elections, health care and more. He joins the SC Daily Gazette from The Augusta Chronicle, where he reported on Georgia legislators, military and housing issues.
