More than 12O people, many carrying signs that simply read “recede,” gathered at the Statehouse in Columbia on Oct. 18 to encourage the Senate to pass the House version of the Human Life Protection Act (H5399). Since late August, the Senate and House have been passing H5399 back and forth, with neither chamber willing to compromise enough to pass the bill on to the Governor. The drama has played out in front of the backdrop of the state Supreme Court that will soon decide whether or not the language of the 2021 Fetal Heartbeat Bill meets the standard set by the South Carolina Constitution.

The bill fell well short of the number of votes needed for the Senate to recede (to agree to abandon its version of H5399 and pass the original House version), and instead, voted overwhelmingly (38 to 6) to insist on the Senate version of H5399. Ten Republicans joined all of the Democrats in voting against the motion to recede, resulting in the motion failing 17 to 26. All of the optimism this summer for a strong bill to protect life that sprang from the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has now been reduced to a final chance for a compromise bill to emerge from a Senate/House Conference Committee.