South Carolina Supreme Court upholds six-week abortion ban
Gabrielle M. Etzel
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The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday announced its decision to uphold the state’s six-week abortion ban.
The 4-1 decision was decided by the all-male state Supreme Court after Planned Parenthood filed suit against the law and argued before the court in June.
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“To be clear, our decision today is in no way intended to denigrate or exalt any of the valid concerns on either side of the abortion debate, whether those concerns are based in privacy, morality, medicine, religion, bodily autonomy, or something else,” the majority decision written by Justice John Kittredge reads.
The majority’s primary argument is that the rule of law does not permit the court to be a legislative body and that the state legislature was intentional with the way it amended the six-week abortion ban legislation after the court struck down an initial version of a similar law from 2021.
“It is apparent the South Carolina General Assembly carefully crafted the 2023 Act in an effort to demonstrate that its policy decision was not arbitrary,” Kittredge wrote.
Oral arguments in the case heavily emphasized whether a pregnant woman can reliably know that she is pregnant at six weeks and whether a fetal heartbeat can accurately be detected within this time frame.
The state argued in June that millions of women across the country are capable of knowing that they are pregnant within enough of a window to seek an abortion prior to six weeks gestation, with the majority of abortions in the United States taking place very early in pregnancy.
Chief Justice Donald Beatty, who questioned state attorneys during oral arguments as to whether the “emotional trauma” of an unintended pregnancy was equivalent to that of rape or incest, was the only dissenting vote.
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Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC), a staunch advocate of the anti-abortion measure, called the ruling a “historic moment” and a “culmination of years of hard work and determination by so many in our state to ensure that the sanctity of life is protected.”
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic has not yet made a statement on the verdict.