A “personhood” bill has been introduced in both the South Carolina Senate and House that would set the legal definition of human life as beginning at fertilization and extend constitutional protections to all unborn children.

If passed, the legislation essentially bans all abortions, except in a case preventing the death of a pregnant person, and would make having or performing an abortion a felony.

The proposed law will restore to unborn citizens every right to life that born citizens enjoy as citizens of South Carolina without exception, according to Robert Jackson, a family practice doctor in Chesnee.

When the bill was unveiled earlier this year at the capitol rotunda, Jackson, a member of First Baptist Church, Boiling Springs, and a longtime pro-life advocate, stated, “There is no circumstance, no matter how desperate, that justifies the killing of an innocent unborn human being. We should not lay our head on the pillow any night until we have satisfied our conscience that we have done all within our personal resources to put an end to what amounts to the wholesale slaughter of innocent unborn children in South Carolina.”

Gov. Henry McMaster, who attended the rally, has pledged to sign the legislation. More than 5,000 babies reportedly die by abortion in three abortion clinics in South Carolina each year.