17 of 24 SC House Republicans flip on re-vote; Republican-Majority SC House passes Abortion-Funding State Budget on second vote, 64 to 54, on June 3, 2010
Republican-Majority SC Senate then also approves by vote of 22 - 16, on June 3
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1) SC House approves State Budget, 64-54, on June 3:
45 other Republicans had already voted FOR the State Budget with selected Abortion-Funding in the State Health Insurance Plan (SHIP) on Wednesday, June 2 (see below), but 24 Republicans had also voted against it - and together with 45 Democrats who were disgruntled about other issues - that was enough to reject the Abortion-Funding Conference Report for the 2010-2011 State Budget (H.4657) by a vote of 47 Yeas to 69 Nays on June 2.
The Republican-Majority SC House has 73 Republicans, 51 Democrats.
However, then came a re-vote on Thursday, June 3, and with pressure from the SC House Republican leadership and reportedly legislative priority promises made for next year by the House Republican Caucus, 17 out of the 24 Republicans who had voted against the Abortion -Funding Conference Report on June 2, flipped their vote on the June 3 re-vote, voting now to approve the State Budget Conference Report with the selected Abortion-Funding in the SHIP. There were only six SC House Republicans out of the 24 who did not flip, and voted again on June 3 to reject the conference report: Duncan, Haley, Millwood, Norman, Scott, and Garry Smith.
These are the 17 SC House Republicans who flipped their votes from June 2, and on June 3 voted FOR the State Budget Conference Report including the selected Abortion-Funding in the SHIP: Allison, Ballentine, Barfield, Bedingfield, Cato, Chalk, Crawford, Delleney, Huggins, Long, Lucas, Rice, Simrill, Stewart, Thompson, Toole, T. R. Young [ one other legislator had a leave of absence for the day ]
So, in the end, the Republican-Majority SC House led by Speaker Bobby Harrell (R-Charleston), with 73 Republicans, adopted the State Budget Conference Report with selected Abortion-Funding in the SHIP (as well as other Abortion-Funding, surgical and chemical, e.g., Medicaid), and had only SIX Republicans who voted against it ...
... Instead of finding FOUR (out of the 12) pro-abortion-funding Republican Senators in the Republican-Majority SC Senate who had voted against the pro-life amendment proposed by Senator David Thomas to ban SHIP Abortion-Funding on April 28 ( Alexander, Campbell, Cleary, Courson, Fair, Knotts, Leatherman, Larry Martin, McConnell, O'Dell, Peeler, Rankin ) to change their votes, from voting to fund abortion, to pro-life. So in effect, 62 (45 + 17) Republicans in the SC House on June 3 went along with Abortion-Funding in the SHIP, instead of finding a net of just FOUR Republicans (or Democrats) in the Senate who would change their April 28 vote against Senator Thomas' amendment to ban SHIP abortion-funding.
Overall then, because of the net lack of FOUR pro-life State Senators, the taxpaying citizens of South Carolina may be forced to again pay for selected SHIP abortions in the State Budget, and we will all share in that corporate bloodguilt (Numbers 35:33, Proverb 6:16, 17; Deuteronomy 19:10).
Read and download the complete report here.
