The law would make illegal the sharing of abortion information on the Internet and raises serious concerns about freedom of speech nationwide
After the June Supreme Court Dobbs decision overturned nearly 50 years of abortion care precedent, several states have moved quickly to pass abortion-related legislation. This has frequently been in the form of restricting or protecting access to the medical procedure. But efforts to limit abortion aren’t solely about what happens in a medical facility. They can go far beyond that.
The South Carolina bill comes from Republican state Senators Richard Cash, Rex F. Rice and Daniel B. Verdin III, S. 1373, the Equal Protection at Conception—No Exceptions—Act, makes abortions illegal in South Carolina, and also makes it a crime to, broadly defined, “aid, abet, or conspire” with someone to procure an abortion. It mirrors a National Right to Life Committee blueprint bill, which was meant to be copied by state lawmakers nationwide.
Together, these two pieces of the bill represent a prohibition on sharing information in just about every way you can share information online. Furthermore, this law equates sharing information with aiding and abetting abortion—and classifies it as a felony. That’s not merely a hypothetical. Companies that worry about being held liable for posts from people who use their site often over-censor content to cover their bases. They have clear problems controlling how information passes through their networks, which makes them more likely to take a heavy-handed approach, if pushed. It’s already happening with information about abortion.
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