COLUMBIA, SC — The South Carolina Supreme Court said on Wednesday that the state can keep its law against abortions about six weeks after conception. This is because they agreed with the oldest explanation of when a heartbeat begins.
Even though the medical language in the 2023 law wasn’t clear, both backers and opponents of the law seemed to think it banned abortions after six weeks until Planned Parenthood lost its challenge to the whole law two years ago.
The law says that abortions can’t happen if an ultrasound shows “cardiac activity,” which means “the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart within the gestational sac.”
According to the state, that’s when an ultrasound can pick up on heart movement. Planned Parenthood said that the words after “or” mean that the ban shouldn’t begin until the heart’s key parts come together and “repetitive rhythmic contraction” starts. This will usually happen around nine weeks.
The justices agreed that South Carolina’s heartbeat measure, which is similar to language in laws in a number of other states, was not an exact medical rule. People on both sides of the problem said this made them look into what the General Assembly really meant, which showed that it was clear that both groups saw it as a six-week ban.
It was impossible to find a single instance during the 2023 legislative session where anyone with any connection to the General Assembly framed the Act as making abortion illegal after about nine weeks, wrote Associate Justice John Few in the court’s decision.
The judges said that people who were against the law used six weeks to try to change the rules about when child support payments should begin, but those changes were not approved.
The Supreme Court also pointed out that Planned Parenthood had used the phrase “six-week ban” more than 300 times in previous filings. This is because South Carolina’s ban on cardiac activity in 2021 was overturned by a 3-2 vote in 2023, but it was reinstated months later after the General Assembly changed the law, and the only woman on the court who overturned the ban had to retire because of her age.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, most states controlled by Republicans have started enforcing new bans or limits on abortion, while most states controlled by Democrats have tried to protect access to abortion.
At the moment, abortion is illegal in 12 states at all times of pregnancy, with a few exceptions. At or around six weeks into pregnancy, South Carolina and three other states don’t allow abortions. This means that women often don’t even know they’re pregnant.
There is still a fight going on over South Carolina’s abortion law. This month, a federal judge let five OB-GYN doctors’ lawsuit go on. The doctors said they can’t properly treat their patients because they’re afraid they could be charged with crimes because of the vague definitions of “heartbeat” and the fact that abortions are only legal when there is a fatal fetal anomaly or when a woman’s life is in danger.
If the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, South Carolina law also lets women have abortions up to 12 weeks after they get pregnant.
GOP South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said that the state will keep fighting as long as the law is being questioned.
In a statement, he said, “Today’s ruling is another clear and decisive victory that will protect the lives of many unborn children and show that South Carolina is still the leader in protecting the sacredness of life.”
Planned Parenthood also promised to keep fighting the ban, saying that it hurts women and the state’s health care system.
“Today, justice did not win, and the people of South Carolina are paying for it.” “People have been forced to carry pregnancies against their will, gotten infections that could have killed them, and died because of this abortion ban,” the group said in a statement.