Why the South Carolina Republican in That Viral Abortion Video Voted for a New Ban

Last week, a video went viral in which Republican South Carolina state representative Neal Collins, speaking during a committee hearing, recounted an awful story a doctor had told him about a pregnant 19-year-old woman who’d been denied immediate treatment when her water broke and she began to experience a miscarriage 15 weeks into her pregnancy, before a baby can survive outside the womb.

“The standard of care was to advise her that they could extract [the child] or she could go home. The attorneys told the doctors that because of the fetal-heartbeat bill — because that 15-week-old had a heartbeat — the doctors could not extract [the baby until its heartbeat stopped],” Collins said in the video, relaying what the doctor told him. “I voted for that [heartbeat] bill. These are affecting people. What we do matters.”

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John McCormack

John McCormack is a former Washington correspondent for National Review and was a fellow at the National Review Institute.

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Last week, a video went viral in which Republican South Carolina state representative Neal Collins, speaking during a committee hearing, recounted an awful story a doctor had told him about a pregnant 19-year-old woman who’d been denied immediate treatment when her water broke and she began to experience a miscarriage 15 weeks into her pregnancy, before a baby can survive outside the womb.

“The standard of care was to advise her that they could extract [the child] or she could go home. The attorneys told the doctors that because of the fetal-heartbeat bill — because that 15-week-old had a heartbeat — the doctors could not extract [the baby until its heartbeat stopped],” Collins said in the video, relaying what the doctor told him. “I voted for that [heartbeat] bill. These are affecting people. What we do matters.”