There is a reason that the separation of church and state was written into the Bill of Rights. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” it says. 

If that’s the case, why is the heartbeat bill being passed in South Carolina?

The heartbeat bill, in summary, declares that a woman will be charged with a felony if she receives an abortion after a heartbeat is heard on the ultrasound, unless the pregnancy is a product of rape, incest, or severe risk of the mothers health if she were to carry on with the pregnancy.

One may read those rules and think to themselves that this is reasonable for a situation so “taboo” as abortion, but this is not a viable reality for most women.

Heartbeats are detected in fetuses as early as six and a half weeks after insemination — and most don’t even realize they are pregnant at this time yet.

Due to birth control methods, there are a fair amount of women who don’t get regular periods or periods at all, so there would be no reason to be worried if she does not get hers on time. She’d go to the doctor, the fetus being the size of a grain of rice, but no longer be able to deal with the unwanted pregnancy unless she wanted to be put in jail for two years and fined $10,000. 

That is what the heartbeat bill will make a new reality. 

Signed by Governor McMaster on Feb. 18, the law has officially been certified in the state of South Carolina, and people are enraged.

Many times this law has been attempted in the state, but it wasn’t until changes were made in the Supreme Court by former President Donald Trump, who elected republicans who tipped the scale, that the law was approved.

This begs the question — why are a bunch of men making these important decisions over women’s bodies? There is not a single woman on South Carolina’s senate team. And almost every single one of those men have been open about their Christan faith. 

A religion that prohibits the idea of abortions.

This is not said to bash the Christian religion, but what was that again about the separation of church and state?

Everyone is entitled to their own affiliations and beliefs — but it’s when those beliefs start to dictate other people’s choices that it becomes a problem — especially when the people with those beliefs make laws in favor of them, rendering anyone with any differences defenses.

Abortion is not a simple topic. It’s difficult, heartbreaking in some cases while lifesaving in others, but it should not be up to anyone besides the mother, who would sacrifice her future and her body for nine months, to make any call regarding it.

There are children in the foster care system with little to no funding. There are children living on the street with no government support. Yet McMaster says on his Instagram post, “there is nothing more important than protecting the sanctity of life.” So why doesn’t he put that energy into the kids who are already born, and not the size of a grain of rice (who, worth noting, could not live outside of the mothers womb at that time)?

And let’s say that women stop getting abortions because of this. Then one or two turn out to be LGBT — would those religious political leaders still care about those kids then when they vote to take away their right to marriage? 

It’s been said before but maybe there’s a reason for the repition — if one doesn’t agree with abortion — don’t have one. But it should not be up to seven or eight men to decide what a woman chooses to do with their body. 

Not even to mention that this bill is completely classist to women in poverty. There are people out there who can’t afford birth control and regular ultrasounds, let alone a child.

If these men were so concerned about the “sanctity of life,” why don’t they offer help to the mothers, who are now forced to carry the child to term, with the expenses that they are shoving onto them? Help the moms through the college they can’t afford now because they couldn’t put their own, fully functioning, life first?

They care about that fetus until it’s born. After that, they’d look the other way when that family is starving, making ends meet by working on the street because it wouldn’t look “presentable” in the city they represent.

There’s more than two reasons for abortion. And a bunch of men putting their religion ahead of the citizens they swore to protect when they were elected should not be one of them under any circumstances. 

No one is saying that the termination of pregnancy should be allowed at any phase of the pregnancy; late term abortions where the baby could survive on it’s own without the womb of the mother should be limited to extreme cases like life threatening situations.

But this law gives false hope. It puts women who are already under large amounts of pressure to do the right thing for themselves and the fetus in an impossible situation that traps them in a corner. 

They need time to think, plan, and come to a conclusion that is best for everyone involved — and this bill takes that away from them.

And we must do better to protect them.