COLUMBIA — A House lawmaker's comment linking abortion to murder sparked a fiery and personal debate that lasted for hours Wednesday night as the House sorted through more than 60 budget amendments.
Before it was over, accusations of hypocrisy, cowardice, and playing God sounded from the podium, along with questions about race, religion and respect.
House Speaker Jay Lucas at one point lectured House members, asking them to treat each other with respect and for proponents of an amendment that could mean $30 million less for state health care in an effort to prevent $13,000 in family planning money going to Planned Parenthood not to be too offended by criticism.
"I've had a number of members come up to me and say they are offended," Lucas said."It's a tough issue. You put up an amendment like this you are going to catch some criticism. It's not my job to stop that. Again, we have ladies and gentlemen in here and I was taught never to see color and I hope no one in this room does."
The chamber finished its work amending the Senate's $8.3 billion budget plan shortly after midnight. The measure now returns to the Senate and negotiations by both sides to work out differences with four days left in this year's session.
The House began its budget debate Wednesday with a proposal that was "slimmed down" from the initial amendment debated but not passed last week. Rep. Brian White, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he had removed a $54 million new forensic lab for the State Law Enforcement Division as well as $13 million for state prison security, both items that were to be paid for out of excess debt service money.
The Senate had spent the debt service funds on different items but House leaders did not want to. However, the House voted Wednesday night to spend the $54 million on the lab using excess debt service, along with $8.3 million for prison security and $5 million on the Jasper County port. They also approved increasing school safety funding from $10 million to $15 million using lottery money.
Other amendments included temporary laws concerning utilities, solar power, anti-semitic language and a proposal to prevent sanctuary cities by requiring SLED to monitor local government compliance with immigration law. Among the amendments that failed was one to provide $5 million for a proposed African-American museum as the Senate had done.
But the focus for much of the evening was abortion, the perennial, divisive topic for lawmakers. Two anti-abortion proposals have vexed the Senate as well this week. The Senate Tuesday night tabled a proposal that would have banned almost all abortions in the state and debate continued into the night Wednesday on a bill to ban dismemberment abortions.
In the House, the issue was not banning abortion but cutting off funding of any type to Planned Parenthood or other abortion providers, through budget amendments.
The House first passed a proposal by Rep. Joshua Putnam, a Piedmont Republican, to direct the state's Medicaid agency to request a waiver from the federal government by Oct. 1 so the state could withhold family planning money from organizations operating abortion clinics.
Gov. Henry McMaster has already ordered the same action but Putnam said the agency has not yet applied for the waiver and wanted to be sure it did.
Lawmakers say no state money goes to pay for abortions at abortion clinics. Planned Parenthood operates one of three clinics in the state.
Putnam told the House that about $13,000 in family planning money is paid to Planned Parenthood in South Carolina. He said South Carolina receives a total of about $36 million a year in federal funds for family planning and abstinence-only education.
While some in the chamber said they wanted to see no funding for Planned Parenthood and not to ask permission from the federal government, Putnam said, "this is an avenue we can take."
But Rep. Justin Bamberg, a Bamberg Democrat, argued the state had plenty of more pressing issues.
The House voted to approve the amendment 84-24.
A little while later, Rep. John McCravy, a Greenwood Republican, proposed withholding any federal family planning money until the waiver was approved. If federal officials do not approve the waiver, the state would return the money, under the amendment.
McCravy said that could amount to about $30 million.
"I agree with Franklin Graham who said, abortion is a sin and clearly murder in God's eyes," he said. "Planned Parenthood has done enough killing and needs to be shut down. The state should not be giving any money to a business that kills unborn babies."
McCravy said while $30 million would be a lot of money, he believes there is enough waste in the agency that could be found to pay for it.
"I think life means more than money," he said. "I believe that abortion is the murder of a child. I can't understand why everybody doesn't believe the way I believe."
Democrats reacted strongly to McCravy's proposal and his words, some saying the state could not afford to give up $30 million.
Rep. Todd Rutherford, leader of House Democrats, said he was upset by McCravy's "insensitive" use of the word murder.
He listed examples of rape or incest, including a recent Lexington County case in which a man repeatedly raped his children and a rapist who attacked three women.
"Mr. McCravy, those children deserve better than to have you call them murderers because their father gets on top of them and impregnates them and they choose to do something about it."
He said his last rape case as a prosecutor before becoming a lawmaker involved a man accused of raping multiple women after threatening to kill their children in the next room if they did not comply.
"I assure you had any of these sought an abortion they would not be murderers," he said. 'They do not deserve that indignity with which you named them."
He said McCravy does not understand what rape and incest victims must go through.
"The insensitivity with which you stand here and insult and insinuate that these women are simply murderers shows intellectual dishonesty and an intellectual laziness with which you know you can do better," he said.
Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, an Orangeburg Democrat who said she works with sexual assault victims, said she also was offended by McCravy's words.
"It doesn't seem to matter that there are no state funds for abortion," she said. "This is all about posturing. This is about campaigning."
She said it seems each year the House "descends" into debate over abortion during budget talks.
"You come in here with your cloak of hypocrisy," she told the House. "And talk about life and how cherished it should be. And yet vote after vote on any vote that helps the least of these, that charity seems to disappear."
If it was not for Planned Parenthood, there are women who would not get breast exams or pap smears, she said.
"Who gives you men in here the right to come up in here and talk about what a woman should do with her body? she asked. "Who made you God? Tell me, who?"
Rep. Garry Smith, a Simpsonville Republican who opposes abortion, said a woman has the choice about what to do about her body but not when it affects another life.
He said rape and incest are "horrendous."
"But you don't compound it by taking another life," he said."That is not what you do. That is not right. That is not choice. Your choice does not go to another life."
Rep. Rosalyn Henderson-Myers, a Spartanburg Democrat, said she found it "appalling, amazing and shocking" that more female lawmakers were not speaking about the issue at the podium.
"This amendment is against women," she said, adding that it makes no sense to give up $30 million in family planning money in an effort to fight abortion.
Rep. Chandra Dillard, a Greenville Democrat, told the House she is pro-choice.
She said she was persuaded to come to the podium when Bamberg urged female lawmakers to speak up on the issue.
"Each year we go through this," she said. "And I'm really talking to my female colleagues. We sit and are talked about, talked to and not with."
She said she wants to encourage women watching the debate, "if what they see here today is appalling to them, they shouldn't be silent, they shouldn't be beat down" and they should vote their convictions.
A move to table the amendment failed 30-71. The chamber then voted 66-26 to adopt the amendment.
House Ways and Means Chairman Brian White of Anderson unveiled Thursday a 38-page, $70 million amendment to the Senate's $8.3 billion budget plan.
Democrats and at least one Republican complained that the proposal was placed on lawmakers' desks that morning and they needed more time to study it. Democrats repeatedly moved to adjourn for the week so members could spend the weekend reading the plan, but the body refused to adjourn and debated the proposal for hours.
It would offer $2 million to hire more school resource officers, $10 million for school security improvements, $13 million for one-time prison security improvements, and $5 million more for prison officer salaries.
Gov. Henry McMaster in January asked for $5 million for school resource officers to work in schools unable to afford them. After the Florida shooting, he asked lawmakers to place officers in all schools and spend whatever it took.
The House, however, in its initial budget proposal and the Senate in its proposal did not include money for resource officers.