Photo: Tracy Glantz/The State/Tribune News Service via Getty
TheSouth Carolina Supreme Courthas overturned the state’s ban on abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, claiming it violates the state’s constitution.
The 2021 law, which banned abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected — typically after six weeks, and sometimes as early as four weeks into a pregnancy — was found in a 3-2rulingto have violated a patient’s right to privacy.
“We hold that the decision to terminate a pregnancy rests upon the utmost personal and private considerations imaginable, and implicates a woman’s right to privacy,” Justice Kaye Hearn wrote in the majority opinion, perABC News. “While this right is not absolute and must be balanced against the State’s interest in protecting unborn life, this Act, which severely limits — and in many instances completely forecloses — abortion, is an unreasonable restriction upon a woman’s right to privacy.”
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Chief Justice Donald Beatty and Justice John Few were also part of the majority ruling, in which Hearn wrote that six weeks was not a “reasonable period of time” for someone to “determine she is pregnant and to take reasonable steps to terminate that pregnancy.” Those who voted to uphold the ban argued that the right to privacy was only applicable for searches and seizures.
Jenny Black, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic shared in astatementthat the ruling was a “monumental victory” following the six-week abortion ban, which took effect on June 27 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and our partners will continue our fight to block any bill that allows politicians to interfere in people’s private health care decisions,” Black wrote.
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“With this opinion, the Court has clearly exceeded its authority. The people have spoken through their elected representatives multiple times on this issue… I look forward to working with the General Assembly to correct this error.”
source: people.com
