As a state Senate subcommittee began debate Wednesday in Columbia over a bill to criminalize abortion , hundreds protested at the S.C. Statehouse.

The nine-hour hearing ended without a vote, but the subcommittee’s leader said he hoped to have another hearing to refine the bill. Outside of the hearing room, the air was filled with tense emotion , according to media reports. A giant I.U.D. blow-up was tethered on the Statehouse grounds.

The bill, S. 323 by Anderson GOP Sen. Richard Cash, would outlaw abortion and eliminate exceptions for rape, incest and fatal fetal anomalies that are allowed under the state’s current six-week abortion ban. And it would send women who defied the proposed law to prison – a provision that led at least two anti-abortion groups to oppose the current

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