Six Republicans running to be South Carolina’s next governor touted their anti-abortion credentials on the debate stage Tuesday but differed on whether they’d support or veto an all-out ban without exceptions.
The debate at the College of Charleston came hours after a Senate committee advanced a bill banning abortions from the onset of a pregnancy, with no exceptions for victims of rape or incest, or for a diagnosed fatal fetal anomaly. Abortions would be legal only in a medical emergency. Women could be sent to prison for up to two years and fined $1,000 for getting an abortion or possessing the drugs to cause one.
A question on whether they agreed with that bill or think the state’s existing six-week ban goes far enough produced the biggest differences of the night in candidates’ answers.
Only one Republican said he’d sign the bill into law: U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman.
Two said they would veto it: Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Attorney General Alan Wilson.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace essentially said she supports the existing law. State Sen. Josh Kimbrell said he doesn’t support putting women in jail. And Isle of Palms businessman Rom Reddy advocated putting it on the ballot for voters to decide.
A pledge to sign
Norman, the 5th District congressman from Rock Hill, started his response by noting he has 17 grandchildren.
“It’s an emotional issue,” he said, adding the “mental illness part of this is what really needs to be addressed.” Without elaborating on what that meant, he continued: “It’s harsh to put someone in prison — that 15-year-old who’s aborted a baby or attempted to. That said, if it gets to my desk, I would sign it. I think that would be the right step.”
Norman happened to be the last on stage to answer that question.
Senate votes
He followed Kimbrell, of Spartanburg County, who was among the eight senators who voted Tuesday morning to send the all-out ban to the Senate floor. Yet, he said, “if this goes to the floor, I’ll never support the level of penalties included in that bill.
“I personally believe life begins at conception. At the same time, as a Christian, I believe there are two sides of the Christian message: justice and mercy. You can’t focus so much on justice, you’re willing to put a woman who’s scare in jail,” he said, echoing comments he made last week in a subcommittee meeting before voting to advance the bill to the full committee.
Kimbrell, first elected to the Senate in 2020, noted he was a co-sponsor of the six-week ban — both of them.
The first so-called “fetal heartbeat” law, passed in 2021, took effect for less than two months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, before a legal challenge filed in state court blocked it. That law was thrown out in January 2023 as violating the state constitution. The second six-week ban, passed months later, was upheld by South Carolina’s high court.
However, Kimbrell said, “I’ll never support a bill that puts a woman who’s scared in jail. I think the conversation goes against us at that point.”
After the debate, he said his two “yes” votes on the bill in the last two weeks were to allow debate and move it along. But he can’t support it as is on the floor.
It’s unlikely to get floor debate. Sen. Tom Davis, the lone Republican to vote “no” in committee, is pledging to block it. The bill will likely die when the session ends next month.
But another attempt next year is a near-certainty.
Promised vetoes
“If a bill like that showed up on my desk, I’d veto it,” Evette said, after stressing that she’s proud to be endorsed by the national anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Sen. Richard Cash’s bill “has gone too far,” said the lieutenant governor. “I’m very happy with the ‘heartbeat’ bill.”
Wilson, first elected attorney general in 2010, called himself “unapologetically pro-life” — something he’s demonstrated repeatedly, he said, by defending South Carolina’s various anti-abortion laws and directives in state and federal courts. That included a seven-year legal saga over non-abortion services offered by Planned Parenthood.
However, he said, “we must have compassion for the unborn and the mother. We must build consensus for everyone moving forward and apply common sense, which is why I would veto that bill.”
As his time ran out, he quickly added that he also wants to see reforms in adoptions and foster care, issues his running mate, Sen. Mike Reichenbach, said he wants to champion. (No other candidate has picked a running mate.)
Mace’s 2019 floor speech
Mace, first elected to Congress in 2000, pointed to her own votes on the six-week ban while she was still in the state House.
In 2019, Mace’s recounting on the House floor of being raped at 16 resulted in her then-colleagues approving exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. While an abortion foe, she said during an impassioned speech at the lectern, she couldn’t support the bill without exceptions for victims of such heinous crimes.
That was the first time she’d told her story publicly, and the six-week ban passed the House. Mace was among Republicans voting “yes.” But that bill never got a vote on the Senate floor after Cash succeeded in striking the exceptions during that chamber’s committee process.
“I am pro-life with exceptions for rape and incest and life of the mother,” the 1st District congresswoman said on stage Tuesday. “That would be my position as governor.”
‘Tired of this’
Reddy, a first-time candidate for elected office, called himself “pro-life,” noted he has two “healthy, beautiful” grandchildren, then went an entirely different direction from his opponents.
“Aren’t we tired of this discussion?” he asked. “It takes up time every single year.”
In overturning a nearly half-century precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling returned the legality of abortions to the states to decide.
“The Supreme Court did not say the loudest voice in the ruling class prevails. They said it’s up to the people in the state, so let’s put it to a referendum,” he said, “and put this to bed once and for all.”
During floor debate on the six-week ban, GOP legislators repeatedly refused proposals to put the issue on the ballot as a constitutional referendum.
Tuesday’s debate was the second in a series organized by the state Republican Party. But at the first debate April 1 at the Newberry Opera House, only four candidates participated.
A seventh Republican who entered the race on the last day of candidate filing was not invited to participate. As of Tuesday, no campaign disclosures for Jacqueline Hicks DuBose of Hartsville could be found on the state Ethics Commission website.
A third GOP gubernatorial debate is set for May 26 at Wofford College.
Seanna Adcox is a South Carolina native with three decades of reporting experience. After covering the S.C. Legislature and state politics for 18 years. she launched the SC Daily Gazette in November 2023 as the 37th state affiliate under the States Newsroom umbrella. Her previous employers include The Post and Courier and The Associated Press.
Abortion ban advances, but SC senator vows to stop it from going further
The bill, which removes exceptions and punishes women seeking abortions, is almost certain not to be heard on the floor
BY: SKYLAR LAIRD - APRIL 21, 2026 2:42 PM
COLUMBIA — A strict abortion ban that threatens to send women to prison for two years advanced Tuesday to the Senate floor, where a block on further debate is guaranteed.
The Senate Medical Affairs Committee advanced the bill with an 8-4 vote along party lines, with one exception: Republican Sen. Tom Davis voted “no” and repeated his pledge to fight the bill from getting further. (See info box below for a full breakdown.)
It was Davis’ threatened filibuster that blocked a ban from conception in fall 2022, when the Legislature returned for special sessions after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Roe v. Wade. The General Assembly eventually passed a law in 2023 banning abortions after six weeks, which Davis voted for, but he’s made clear he can’t support an all-out ban.
“I’m going to do whatever I can to prevent this bill from ever becoming law in South Carolina,” Davis, of Beaufort, said Tuesday, echoing a promise he made before session began in January.
The 2024 elections newly gave the GOP a supermajority in the chamber.
But a bill that bans abortions from the onset of a pregnancy, with no exceptions for victims of rape or incest — and punishes women for seeking abortions — still lacks enough support to clear the chamber, Davis said. Under Senate rules, putting the bill in a special debate status to override his objection would take two-thirds approval. If supporters manage a workaround to begin debate, ending Davis’ filibuster would still take 26 senators agreeing to sit him down and get to a vote.
“I’m not really sure what we’re doing here,” Davis said. “This bill isn’t going to get debated on the calendar. This bill couldn’t muster 15 votes in that Senate.”
The Republican caucus has had no conversations about the bill, said Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield.
Even without a filibuster, timing makes the possibility of passage unlikely.
This week, the Senate is debating its state spending proposal. The budget package is in a special priority status that doesn’t allow any other bills to be debated.
If senators wrap that up this week, that leaves just nine days in the regular legislative session.
The bill was advanced from a committee chaired by one of its co-sponsors, Sen. Danny Verdin of Laurens.
A Senate panel rejected an even stricter bill last fall.
The latest effort would ban abortions from the moment a doctor could determine a woman was pregnant. It would remove exceptions for victims of rape or incest, who can get an abortion through the 12th week under existing law. It would also remove exceptions for fetal anomalies so severe that doctors don’t expect the baby to survive outside the womb.
It enables civil lawsuits as a way of enforcement. And the bill would reclassify abortion-inducing drugs in an attempt to restrict access.
The proposal goes too far, Davis said, calling it “offensive to women.”
“This law is so out of step with where South Carolinians are,” Davis said. “It does not create a culture of life. It creates a culture of surveillance, of family conflict, of legal terror. It sends a horrible message.”
Cash, the main sponsor, said he and Davis fundamentally disagree. The father of eight has made banning abortions without exceptions his primary issue since his 2017 election to the Senate.
“Either you believe that a human life begins at conception and should have legal protection, or you don’t,” the Anderson Republican told reporters after the meeting. “There are quite a lot of people, myself included, who would say ‘yes.’”
Discussion in the committee mostly involved minutiae of phrasing and technical applications under the bill. Democrats picked apart the wording and implications, questioning what might cause extra problems.
The smallest words matter in a bill that would almost certainly face a court challenge, Sen. Deon Tedder, a North Charleston Democrat, told his colleagues.
“Words do matter,” he said. “Commas matter. As an attorney, I know this.”
In 2024, two commas in the so-called “fetal heartbeat” law were central to a lawsuit from Planned Parenthood questioning the timing of the ban.
With no language in the law referring to pregnancy weeks, courts were asked to interpret whether it actually took effect at six weeks or nine.
The state’s highest court upheld the ban at six weeks. But that wasn’t settled until two years after the law’s passage.
That proves phrasing matters, argued the Democrats on the committee, who are all attorneys.
Even if his latest bill ultimately goes no further, Cash said, he’s glad senators took it up and moved it along.
“I can’t control the future,” he said. “I can’t control anything and everything that’s going to happen. But part of my job is to simply present what I believe is right and good and true and just take it one step at a time from there.”
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.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
