Activists' push for near-total abortion ban leads to split among SC Republicans
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Two spines sit in the Statehouse on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, before activists with Students for Life Action planned to bring them to representatives' offices. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — The 'inflammatory tactics' by an anti-abortion group demanding a near-total ban in South Carolina prompted most members of the Legislature's Family Caucus to leave the group and rebuke its GOP leader.
A resignation letter Wednesday to Rep. John McCravy, the caucus' leader, was co-signed by 29 of its 48 House members.
The mass departure came soon after McCravy, whose official caucus title is moderator, stood at the Statehouse with members of the activist group whose tactics included going to the churches of GOP leaders and putting fliers on windshields asking churchgoers to tell their fellow congregant 'Act NOW. Don't Let Any More Preborn Babies Die!'
At a news conference Wednesday, the next-to-last day of the 2025 legislation session, members of Students for Life Action showed reporters the two plastic spines they planned to deliver to House Speaker Murrell Smith and Judiciary Chairman Weston Newton, telling them to 'grow a spine' and bring up McCravy's bill for a vote.
The proposal, similar to previous bills McCravy has introduced that failed in the Senate, would ban nearly all abortions from the onset of pregnancy, with no exceptions for victims of rape or fatal fetal anomalies.
'Chief among our concerns is your continued refusal to condemn the deeply troubling behavior of out-of-state, third-party groups that have descended upon South Carolina churches to provoke and disrupt worship services,' reads the resignation letter to McCravy, provided to reporters. (Students for Life Action is a Virginia-based group with members in South Carolina.)
It comes a week after Majority Leader Davey Hiott, R-Pickens, confirmed he left the group he co-founded in 2017 with McCravy. Beyond differences in opinion over how to proceed with the abortion ban, Hiott accused McCravy of making homophobic and antisemitic comments about fellow legislators, which the Greenwood Republican vehemently denied.
Wednesday's letter made no mention of those comments.
Rep. John McCravy, R-Greenwood, talks during a Students For Life Action news conference pushing for a near-total abortion ban on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
The Family Caucus, which McCravy called 'the conscience of the Republican Party,' functions as a support group of sorts for socially conservative Christians interested in promoting issues that support children and families, Rep. Richie Yow, R-Chesterfield, told reporters.
That used to include members of the agenda-setting House Republican Caucus and the hardline Freedom Caucus, as well as a single Democrat. The archconservative Freedom Caucus didn't join the mass resignation, instead jumping to McCravy's defense.
McCravy has not left the majority Republican Caucus, and the Freedom Caucus has not asked him to join them, he told reporters Wednesday.
Abortion
Yow, a Baptist pastor, said what the activists did is not OK, no matter what the issue.
'Their harassment of churchgoers — on Palm Sunday, no less — crosses a moral line,' read the letter to McCravy. 'Your silence as the moderator of this caucus, along with your continued support and engagement with the groups that employ those tactics, is unacceptable.'
Their fliers claimed Smith and Newton were holding up McCravy's near-total abortion ban. The activist group also sent text messages and bought advertisements targeting the legislative leaders, a spokeswoman said.
If the group's tactics were aggressive, they were justified to push for what they see as right, said Kristan Hawkins, the organization's president.
'I think educating citizens in a House member's district about what he's really doing in Columbia is actually our job,' Hawkins told the SC Daily Gazette. 'That's our job as human rights activists.'
Members of House leadership, including Hiott, repeatedly asked McCravy to step in and ask the group to stop. McCravy refused, he said.
'I don't think that's appropriate,' McCravy told the Gazette. 'I think that's unethical.'
He declined to say whether he thought visiting representatives' churches crossed a line.
'College students are going to be more enthusiastic than probably older people like me,' McCravy said. 'I don't want to dampen that enthusiasm.'
House leaders said they aren't opposed to McCravy's bill, which received three hours of testimony but no vote during a subcommittee meeting earlier this year. Smith and Hiott are co-sponsors with McCravy. Newton is not.
Previous attempts by the House to pass near-total abortion bans have failed repeatedly in the Senate, so leaders decided to avoid the lengthy debate until the legislation has a better chance in the upper chamber, Newton told the Gazette.
Plus, there are still lawsuits pending on South Carolina's existing six-week ban, including a challenge before the state Supreme Court on whether the language in the law — which does not actually give a number of weeks — means the ban should start at nine weeks instead.
Amid the March 4 hearing on McCravy's bill, Hiott put out a statement urging fellow representatives to press pause until the state Supreme Court rules.
But McCravy believes the House should have passed the bill anyway.
'If you give up just because you hear a rumor that somebody might not do something, you're never going to win,' McCravy said Wednesday. 'So, we don't give up.'
The group's tactics aren't new, though they're newly against House Republicans.
In 2023, members of Students For Life Action delivered smaller spines to the five female senators who helped defeat McCravy's proposals of a near-total ban following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
That delivery backfired, as the women took the Senate podium to proudly display proof of having a backbone and refused to back down. What ultimately became law in 2023, over the objections of the women who dubbed themselves Sister Senators, was a ban at six weeks, with exceptions for victims of rape or incest and fatal fetal anomalies. The three GOP female senators lost their re-election bids last year.
Hawkins, head of the activist group, said the larger spines for Smith and Newton were to help them 'grow up a little bit.'
'These spineless, feckless attacks against John McCravy, against pro-life students in South Carolina — it's beyond the pale,' Hawkins said Wednesday.
One of the fliers advocacy group Students for Life Action distributed, including at churches. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
But Newton said the group hasn't affected him one way or the other. The lobbying clearly didn't cause him to bring up the bill in the session's waning days. Nor has it made him less inclined to start the debate, he said. He told the Gazette he considers it more of a distraction from legislating.
Comments about other legislators
Hiott told The Post and Courier he resigned his membership partly over McCravy's offensive comments about two fellow legislators. Hiott declined to comment further to the Gazette.
The alleged comments date back to last session, when Hiott claimed McCravy complained to him and other House leaders that Newton, a Bluffton Republican, appointed a 'gay' and a 'Jew' to serve as subcommittee chairs on the House Judiciary Committee. The comments could only be referring to then-Rep. Jason Elliott, the Legislature's first — and still only — openly gay member of the Legislature and now a state senator; and Rep. Beth Bernstein, the state's only Jewish legislator.
Newton told the Gazette that McCravy repeated his comments about Elliott directly to him, telling the chairman he 'didn't want to serve on a subcommittee with that gay.'
Elliott, R-Greenville, did not respond to requests for comment from the Gazette. Bernstein, D-Columbia, said she heard about the remarks secondhand several times.
McCravy said he has good relationships with both Bernstein and Elliott and wouldn't disparage them in any way.
'I would never refuse to serve on a committee because of someone's characteristics or preferences,' McCravy told the Gazette.
He did have private conversations questioning Newton's decision to make Elliott and Bernstein subcommittee chairs because of disagreements over policy issues, he said.
'I don't have anything against either of those people personally in any way,' McCravy said.
Friction on the Judiciary Committee dates back to the end of last year, when McCravy asked to be removed from the powerful committee that vets many of the bills on the Family Caucus' priority list. He denied that his request had anything to do with his fellow committee members, instead citing disagreements with Newton over policy.
The two have publicly butted heads over proposals about betting and alcohol sales. McCravy is a staunch gambling opponent who doesn't imbibe.
Newton, on the other hand, is a co-sponsor this year of legislation legalizing a casino off Interstate 95 in Orangeburg County. The bill advanced through his committee to the House floor last week. On Wednesday, the House voted to 'continue' the bill, meaning it can't be taken up again until 2026.
Other measures the two have publicly disagreed about include bills to create a legal way to bet on horse races, allow people to drink cocktails anywhere in an airport terminal, and enable people order alcohol for delivery to their homes.
But Newton said it was McCravy's claims that the chairman was funded by alcohol lobbyists, followed by the comments about Elliot, that 'led to this unraveling.'
Wednesday's letter, however, cited none of that.
Instead, it said the caucus has become the antithesis of what it's supposed to be while bringing the unwanted divisions of Washington, D.C., to the South Carolina Statehouse.
'We believe this is both unwise and spiritually corrosive,' it read.
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