“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”
04.27.2010 I am honored that the conferees elected myself to chair the conference committee for the 24 hour waiting period (h 3245). Since the Senate is taking up the budget this week we won’t be able to focus on this bill until next week. The House conferees agreed to meet next Tuesday (05.04.2010 10am). We’ll be sure to hammer out our differences between the House version and the Senate version and hopefully get a conference report that we can send to the Governor for his expected signature. Meanwhile, this back and forth reminds me of a classic scene from “Cool Hand Luke”
SC legislators to try again on abortion bill By SEANNA ADCOX – Associated Press Writer COLUMBIA, S.C. —
Work was derailed Tuesday on a bill requiring women to wait at least a day before having an abortion, with House members not attending a meeting and legislators accusing each other of political gamesmanship.
A committee of House and Senate members was set to meet to start hashing out differences in the legislation passed by each chamber. One House member showed up, then left and had staff retrieve her purse from the room. It left the committee’s three senators unable to hold the meeting and shaking their heads.
“We’re not playing this ping-pong game,” said Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, adding he learned hours earlier that House members wouldn’t attend, though the meeting was called last Thursday. “This is a very serious issue.”
He and Sen. Jake Knotts, R-West Columbia, took the podium in the Senate to criticize the House members.
The bill’s author, Rep. Greg Delleney, countered that he made it clear last week he had to be at work Tuesday morning and requested that the meeting be pushed back an hour.
“They’re either being very disingenuous, or they don’t communicate with their staff, or they didn’t grant my request because I had a conflict, or they’re being impolite in their gamesmanship,” said Delleney, R-Chester, the House’s lead conference committee member.
Legislators say they’ll try again next Tuesday.
“I will meet whenever, wherever,” Bryant said, calling it the session’s most important bill. “It encourages mothers to think very, very seriously.”
Both versions would increase the wait time from one hour to one day, but the House wants to require a second trip to a clinic for the procedure. Supporters said they hope the extra time will lead to fewer abortions.
The bill passed by the House last year would tie the 24-hour wait to an ultrasound, which pro-choice advocates have said clinics perform in nearly all cases to verify the age of the fetus. Two years ago, the Legislature required that women be told they can view those ultrasound images.
Critics argued that requiring two trips creates a burden, especially for poor, rural women who may have to take two days off work and arrange travel to one of the three clinics statewide that perform abortions.
The Senate’s version, approved last month, removed the two-trip requirement.
It allowed that information the state requires women to receive to be downloaded and time-stamped off the Department of Health and Environmental Control’s Web site to prove 24 hours had elapsed before an abortion. It also required the Web site to include a link to places where women can get a free ultrasound, to include religiously affiliated pregnancy centers, if they want to get an ultrasound before going to the clinic.
Delleney said women can already get a free ultrasound at the pregnancy centers, and the changes create a “sham waiting period.”
But Bryant said he preferred that a woman go online and review the documents privately over a day to signing the documents at a clinic an hour beforehand.
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