South Carolina’s Governor: I’ll Ban Abortions After 20 Weeks

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is openly pro-life, will sign a bill into law that would ban killing babies in the womb after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The bill, titled the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, was already passed by the South Dakota legislature on March 9; it has already been made law in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Nebraska was the first state to pass the law, in 2010.

Last September, Senate Democrats blocked the Senate’s version of the bill, as the vote was in favor, 54-42, but fell short of a 60-vote sum that would have prevented a filibuster. Ted Cruz voted for the bill while Bernie Sanders opposed the bill; Hillary Clinton has opposed the measure.

Haley told AP, “I can’t imagine any scenario in which I wouldn’t sign it.”

WSOC News 9 reports that doctors who perform abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy could be issued fines up to $10,000 and serve up to three years in prison.

In 2012, Haley signed the Opt Out of Abortion Act and the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act. The Born-Alive Infant Protection Act would protect unborn children who are born alive after a failed abortion but would be left to die afterward.

In the 2007 publication of “Consciousness without a cerebral cortex,” in the medical journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, evidence showed that babies born missing virtually all of the cerebral cortex nonetheless experience pain.

Dr. Vincent J. Collins, who was Professor of Anesthesiology at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois and wrote Principles of Anesthesiology, a highly-cited medical text on the control of pain, joined Dr. Steven Zielinski and attorney Thomas J. Marzen to write:

The functioning neurological structures necessary to suffer pain are developed early in a child’s development in the womb … Functioning neurological structures necessary for pain sensation are in place as early as 8 weeks, but certainly by 13 1/2 weeks of gestation. Sensory nerves, including nociceptors, reach the skin of the fetus before the 9th week of gestation. The first detectable brain activity occurs in the thalamus between the 8th and 10th weeks. The movement of electrical impulses through the neural fibers and spinal column takes place between 8 and 9 weeks gestation. By 13 1/2 weeks, the entire sensory nervous system functions as a whole in all parts of the body.