Past Legislative Priorities

In response to the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling, new South Carolina bills clarify that fertilized human eggs or embryos outside the uterus are not considered human beings under state law. WREN supports protecting IVF as part of our commitment to comprehensive healthcare access. In addition to providing clarity, the legislation also reinforces individuals’ right to decide on pregnancy and parenting.

Currently, candidates and officeholders in South Carolina cannot use campaign funds to cover dependent care expenses incurred during official and campaign business. No parent or family caretaker should be barred from running for office and representing their community because of the cost of caring for their loved ones. Caregiving is a societal responsibility, not just an individual one, and allowing campaign funds to cover caregiving costs recognizes that.

H. 3911 – This bill would repeal existing restrictions on abortion care and affirm the rights to contraception, in vitro fertilization, sex education, and all other forms of reproductive health care.

S.29 – This bill would repeal existing restrictions on abortion care and affirm the rights to contraception, in vitro fertilization, sex education, and all other forms of reproductive health care.

South Carolina is currently one of only two states that criminalizes self-managed abortion. The threat of criminalization unfairly targets marginalized communities and can lead to wrongful punishment for common pregnancy outcomes such as miscarriage. Safe, effective abortion options including self-managed abortion should be widely available and not criminalized.

• S. 149– Removes the tax from menstrual products and diapers 

• H. 3109– Removes the tax from menstrual products, diapers, and toilet paper 

• H. 3110– Adds sales tax exemption for menstrual products during tax free weekend 

• H. 3563- Removes the sales tax for menstrual products

• S.300– This bill would remove the tax from baby formula and baby food, which includes but is not limited to food purees, puffs, teether crackers, puree pouches, and other food intended for sale for children under thirty-six months of age 

• S.27– This bill would increase the amount of paid leave given to state employees and expand who is classified within receiving the benefit. 

• H.3617 – This bill would increase the amount of paid leave given to state employees and expand who is classified within receiving the benefit.

H.3429– This bill would expand the definition of who qualifies as a state employee to include k-12 public school teachers 

H.3908 – This bill shows wide support for getting teachers access to paid parental leave

S.240- Total abortion ban with limited exceptions

H.3490- Abortion ban based on the pregnant person’s reason for the abortion.

H. 3549- Personhood law that grants full legal rights to fertilized eggs,

H. 3552- Total abortion ban with limited exceptions,

S.366- This bill would ban abortion after the first trimester with limited exceptions after the first trimester. 

H. 3774-Total abortion ban with limited exceptions

s.474 -Total abortion ban with limited exceptions

S. 243- Bans access to gender affirming care to minors

S.274- Bans access to gender affirming care to those under 21

H. 3551- Bans access to gender affirming care to minors

H 3730–This bill would ban gender affirming care for anyone under the age of 26 years old. 

S. 151 is now S.628, the language and meaning of the bill are the same. After the initial subcommittee meeting, the legislative council needed to make technical changes beyond what could be accomplished with an amendment.   S.628 will be reintroduced and take the place of S.151. The full Senate Medical Affairs Committee will hear this bill on March 4, 2021 at 10 am. 

WREN supports efforts to bring gender equity to the workplace and caregiving roles.  Paid leave would provide people of all genders with the ability to work and care for their families.  This policy is essential to a healthy and functioning state, no parent should have to choose between bonding with their child and financially providing for their family.

WREN supports H. 3006 which bans the practice of using debt collection for student lunch debt. Meal shaming is a practice that South Carolina schools should be moving away from and using debt collectors is just another form of school meal shaming. Using debt collection firms often passes additional fees onto the family, greatly increasing the amount of debt an already struggling family or household owes. School districts should not be shifting the burden of collecting fees to a debt collector, especially if those fees or any other charges meet or exceed the amount that is owed for school meals.

A minimum marriage age of 18, without exceptions, is the strongest, simplest and most effective way to stop child marriage and its harmful consequences. Legislation raising the legal age of marriage is an important way to reduce the likelihood that children will be exposed to violence or exploitation. It is not sufficient, however. We need to invest in the comprehensive well-being of young people to help them make a healthy transition to adulthood. Young people need and deserve a quality education – which should include sexuality education and education on intimate partner violence. They need access to health care – which should include reproductive health care and mental health care. Families – including teen parents – need services that will help them support themselves and their children. Preparing girls and all young people for a healthy and empowered adulthood is one of the best investments our society can make.

This bill was given a favorable report from the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on 28 April 2021.

Voting is a central principle of a democracy. WREN is committed to increasing access to democracy by eliminating all forms of voter suppression and removing barriers to the franchise. H.3822 would build upon the successes of 2020 to improve access through both in-person and mail early voting. It would institute well-tested approaches to ensuring secure accessible voting for qualified electors. H. 3822, introduced by Representatives Cobb-Hunter and Brawley, is a comprehensive bill that would bring to South Carolina absentee voting provisions that have been successful in other states through many election cycles.

• Section 1 provides same-day registration for in-person absentee voting and defines adequate documentation.
• Section 2 establishes ballot deposit locations and requires that every eligible voter receive a ballot by mail. It provides for methods of return of the ballot by mail or in person by the voter or another person. It also requires signature verification of voter signatures on absentee ballots according to rules to be adopted by the State Election Commission (SEC).
• Section 3 establishes universal no-excuse early voting and a thirty-day period for in-person voting, with locations open until 5:00 PM on each day and on election day until 7:00 PM.
• Section 4 provides a procedure to notify voters of technical defects in absentee ballots, including apparent signature mismatch, and provides an opportunity for cure of that defect.
• Section 5 guarantees timeliness of ballots postmarked on or before the day of the election.
• Sections 6 and 7 require the Department of Corrections to provide information to inmates about the process for restoration of voting rights and also provide a voter registration form and written information how to register.
• Section 8 adds to the existing list of acceptable photo ID a college or university identification card containing a photograph.

WREN is committed to transforming schools into places where every woman, girl, and gender expansive student feels safe, valued, and included. This bill would put students and their education first; studies have shown that when students are fed they learn better.

Currently, some students receiving free and reduced lunch are getting different meals than other students.

Some schools have the following punitive measures for students with school meal debt:

• Cannot walk at graduation
• No recess
• Hand stamping
• No extracurricular activities
• Throwing food away

Under this bill, students that are eligible for free and reduced lunch must be offered the same meal as other students and these meals must be offered regardless of if the student owes money for previous meals. Districts cannot penalize students for failing to pay for school lunches and the State Department of Education will develop and provide a model policy and template for school meal debt collection to each school district.

A taxpayer may claim as a credit against their state income tax, bank tax, or premium tax liability 33% of all equity investments and 50% all cash donations to certified Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs).
For more information on the reservation process visit How It Works.

WREN is committed to ensuring that all women and gender expansive people can work with equity, safety, and dignity, which is why we support S.533. This bill would create a pathway for those who currently make subminimum wage to be paid equally to others.

S.988 was introduced in early January 2022. After being stalled in the committee process for months, anti-choice legislators introduced a copy version of the bill, S.1127, to try to bypass the committee process. Both bills have the same effect.

WREN opposes S.988 and S.1127 because they would outlaw abortion in our state, impact people’s ability to access in vitro fertilization and contraception, and criminalize pregnancy outcomes like miscarriage. Any person of reproductive age could have their life and liberty policed by the state. The people who will suffer the most will be people who already lack access to health care, including young people, people of color, people with disabilities, survivors of violence, people with low incomes, and people living in rural areas. South Carolinians deserve to have their health, safety, and rights respected, and this must include the right to abortion.

WREN is committed to ensuring comprehensive access to health coverage and equitable care, including abortion services, birth control, healthcare for pregnant people, and gender-affirming care. Everyone, no matter their immigration status, deserves access to health care, when and where they need it, without financial difficulty, discrimination, barriers, or stigma.

We respect the right of individuals to make the decisions about pregnancy and parenting that are best for them and support them in those decisions.

These bills are incredibly dangerous. They use language referring to a fertilized egg as a person, meaning that a fertilized egg has all the same rights and protections as a living, breathing human. This is Personhood language which has far-reaching implications beyond just abortion access such as:

• Making abortion illegal. Under this bill, abortion, and anyone who has one performs one or assists in one, could be charged under the criminal code, with charges including feticide, manslaughter, homicide, and more.
• Making IUDs, other contraceptive methods, and Plan B illegal because they could prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.
• Making it impossible to get IVF in South Carolina because of the multiple fertilized eggs needed to produce a pregnancy. Donors and medical professionals who dispose of unused fertilized eggs could be charged with homicide.
• Criminalizing miscarriage and stillbirth and forcing those who experience them to undergo police questioning and possible criminal charges/imprisonment. (this has already happened in many states across the U.S.)
• Criminalizing any act a pregnant person takes that someone could consider as risky towards their pregnancy (ex. smoking, drinking, eating sushi, missing a doctor’s appointment). (This has already happened in S.C. in the case of Whitner v. State)
• Forcing pregnant people to undergo medical treatment they do not want. For example, a pregnant person could be tied down and forced to undergo a cesarean section if a doctor felt that was in the best interest of the fetus and they did not want one.
• Eliminating doctor/patient confidentiality and allowing doctors to report pregnant people to the police.
• And more.

Additionally, the only exception these bills include is to prevent the death of the pregnant person, with no exceptions to preserve their health. A pregnant person has to be at the brink of death in order to access an abortion. This could have lasting implications on their mental and physical health.

S.988 and S.1127 are trigger bans, meaning they will only go into effect if Roe V. Wade is overturned or significantly modified. This may seem like a distant threat, but the Mississippi abortion case that the Supreme Court heard in December 2021 could make it a very real possibility. If Roe falls, and either of these bills are passed, then abortion would be illegal in South Carolina.

S.907 and H.4568 are the Senate and House Versions of the Medication Abortion Misinformation bill. This bill would force providers to disclose medically inaccurate information about medication abortion. It would require doctors to tell abortion patients who receive a medication abortion that they can reverse the medication they’ve taken.

There is no scientific evidence that this works. In fact, a medical study on this proved to be so dangerous for those participating in the study that it had to be stopped. This bill would require doctors and other health care professionals to provide patients with dangerous, unproven, unscientific medical misinformation.

Medication abortion is performed with two medications, mifepristone, and misoprostol. The first medicine (mifepristone) is provided by a doctor at a health center or abortion clinic. The second medication is given to the patient to take at home. Medication abortion is extremely safe. Half of all abortions in SC today are performed through medication.

WREN opposes S.907 because the policy would force doctors to provide patients with information that is medically inaccurate, misleading, and could be harmful to a person’s health.

WREN is committed to ensuring comprehensive access to health coverage and equitable care, including abortion services, birth control, healthcare for pregnant people, and gender-affirming care. Everyone, no matter their immigration status, deserves access to health care, when and where they need it, without financial difficulty, discrimination, barriers, or stigma.

We respect the right of individuals to make the decisions about pregnancy and parenting that are best for them and support them in those decisions.

S.811, S.1130, and H.4776 are all versions of the so-called “Medical Ethics and Diversity Act,” which would allow health care professionals to discriminate against their patients and refuse to provide them care. These dangerous and far-reaching bills permits any person participating in health care service to deny care to their patients for any reason, without a medical justification. The health consequences of such a sweeping law could be catastrophic.

These bills are broad both in the types of services that can be denied and the range of people who are allowed to deny services. Some examples of the potential implications:

• Administrative staff could refuse to submit insurance claims for care to which they had an objection.
• A nurse could refuse to administer prescribed higher levels of pain medication because it could hasten end of life for a terminal patient.
• A doctor could refuse to maintain hormone treatments for a Transgender patient needing inpatient care for an infection.
• A medical researcher could refuse to publish the results of a state funded study because the scientific evidence was in conflict with the researcher’s beliefs.
• A health plan could require a woman to have routine sex with a man for a year before paying for fertility treatments with no exceptions for same-sex couples.

WREN opposes these bills because everyone deserves access to health care, when and where they need it, without financial difficulty, discrimination, barriers or stigma.

Governor Henry McMaster signed H.4608, an anti-transgender bill that restricts transgender students from participating in school sports in middle school, high school, and college.

The passage of H.4608 comes after more than two years of LGBTQ+ and allied South Carolinians resisting similar efforts to ban transgender youth from sports participation. Between 2020 and 2021 advocates defeated 8 different versions of this bill, demonstrating consistent and powerful leadership from supporters of transgender dignity and equality. SC United for Justice & Equality is a coalition of more than 30 organizations committed to LGBTQ equality in SC that fought hard against the bill.

Banning transgender youth from school sports will endanger their health and well-being by erasing them from public life, ostracizing them from their peers, and excluding them from the enormous physical, mental, and social benefits of playing sports. Promoting baseless fears about transgender athletes exacerbates existing gender-based inequalities in interscholastic sports by reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes. This bad policy promotes a climate of hatred that endangers the welfare of all students.

Update from CVSC and Conservation Coalition on S.525:

“Last week (1/24/22 – 1/28/22), legislators came to an agreement on the final version of the Pyrolysis bill (S.525) – a bill that exempts the pyrolysis/advanced recycling industry from solid waste regulations in South Carolina. While CVSC opposed this legislation and saw it as dangerous and unnecessary, we were instrumental in amending the bill to include critical and precedent-setting guardrails that will protect South Carolina’s taxpayers and most vulnerable communities.

The amendments to the bill are the first time that the South Carolina legislature has provided DHEC the ability to review the compliance history of an applicant when granting permits and the first time the legislature has required bonding for a new and unproven type of industry. You can read more about it here and here.

We understand that while improvements in the pyrolysis bill set important precedent, they are not as bold as we had hoped. Therefore, our work to hold polluters accountable for their impacts to the environment and taxpayers does not end here. We must remain vigilant to ensure polluters are held accountable to the highest safety, environmental, and public health standards. This is the most direct way to ensure taxpayers aren’t footing the bill for massive cleanups and that the most vulnerable communities don’t continue to be put in harm’s way.”

A new technology known as Pyrolysis wants special treatment to melt plastic waste in South Carolina. Current law already allows this industry to operate in South Carolina, but big plastic and chemical companies are lobbying your state legislators for special treatment that puts the health and safety of children and families at risk. By removing plastics from the definition of solid waste, that would remove the State’s authority to regulate health and safety from pollution caused by these facilities.

The House Bill (H.3753) goes a step further and also includes an extra provision that will allow industry to burn nearly 10 times the amount of trash than is currently allowed by law. This would mean out-of-state waste gets burned in South Carolina, bringing more pollution and more health impacts to our communities.

S.1 was passed by the South Carolina Legislature and signed into law by Governor McMaster on February 18th, 2021. A lawsuit was immediately filed against it and as a result, a federal judge issued an order blocking S.1 from taking effect. S.1 is not currently enforceable in South Carolina, abortion is still legal, and patients can still access abortion services in our state.

What S.1 does:

• S.1 prevents most pregnant people from getting abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy; this is before many people even know that they are pregnant.
• Many people seeking abortion face logistical obstacles like finding a provider, securing childcare and transportation, and saving funds to cover all of the costs – all of which create delays, and in some cases, stop people from getting the abortion they want.
• The World Health Organization has concluded that restricting access to abortions does not reduce the number of abortions.
• Any person who can get pregnant would be affected by S.1, but the worst effects would be on people who have less access to health care, including young people, people of color, people with disabilities, people with low incomes, and people in rural areas.

Abortion is still legal in South Carolina. 

WREN supports efforts to bring gender equity to the workplace and caregiving roles.  Paid leave would provide people of all genders with the ability to work and care for their families.  This policy is essential to a healthy and functioning state, no parent should have to choose between bonding with their child and financially providing for their family.

WREN advocates for the adoption of the “South Carolina Lactation Support Act” which would provide more people with the right to break time and private space to express milk in their workplaces.

WREN supports H.3967 because restraining a pregnant woman is dangerous and inhumane and can pose undue health risks to the woman and her pregnancy. Restraining a pregnant woman increases their chances of accidentally tripping or falling and harming their pregnancies.  During labor and postpartum recovery, restraints can interfere with appropriate medical care and can be detrimental to the health of the woman and her newborn child.

WREN proposes adoption of the “Act to Establish Pay Equity” which will ensure that employee pay is based on factors such as skill, effort, and responsibility; bans the use of salary history; and provides pay transparency without retaliation.

We support S.395, because child marriage has devastating, lifelong consequences for individuals, and also undermines the health and well-being of our families and communities.

WREN proposes adoption of the “12-Month Supply of Birth Control Act” which would allow women to receive a one year’s supply of birth control at a time, and amplify family planning ability.

South Carolina families and communities miss out on economic opportunities because they do not have access to money or resources (e.g. education, job training, small business lending, affordable housing, etc.).  WREN supports S. 424 which reauthorizes the Community Development Tax Credit that allows donors who make donations to certified Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to receive a 33% state tax credit. South Carolina organizations can use the tax credit to attract donor funding then use those proceeds to assist individuals and businesses.

WREN supports the Workplace Freedom Act and all policies that ensure that women are protected from discrimination.

WREN promotes laws and policies that create an environment where women and girls are free from violence. Those organizations who serve victims should be able to maintain confidences of their clients without punishment.

WREN supports all efforts to close the wage gap in South Carolina. Asking for prior wage history can lead to an employee with equal or superior qualifications making less than a coworker doing the same job simply because they happened to make less in their prior position. Studies show that increased pay transparency creates work environments where employees are more likely to believe they are paid fairly, and thus are more engaged and productive.

WREN supports all efforts to close the wage gap in South Carolina.

WREN supports all efforts to close the wage gap in South Carolina.

We support S.196, because child marriage has devastating, lifelong consequences for individuals, and also undermines the health and well-being of our families and communities

WREN works to promote leadership and civic participation by women and youth and wants an effective, responsive government for all South Carolinians. WREN supports H. 3054 which would create an independent nonpartisan redistricting process with criteria for boundary definition that emphasize fairness to voters rather than to incumbents or parties.

WREN supports the ERA and all policies that ensure that women are protected from discrimination.

Passing such a ban in South Carolina poses a serious threat to women’s health, freedom, and dignity. This is a far-reaching bill drafted by extremist politicians whose goal is to eliminate all abortion in South Carolina.

WREN opposes S.485, as it would eliminate a woman’s right to make personal and private decisions about her own body and her health.

WREN opposes S. 394, the “ban on bans” bill, because local governments should be able to act to improve the health and safety of their communities. Plastic waste breaks down into toxic microplastics that make their way back up the food chain and damage the health of communities. Women and girls are especially vulnerable to toxins in microplastics like endocrine disrupters that can cause negative reproductive health outcomes.