New South Carolina abortion law halted by judge until state Supreme Court review
A new South Carolina law banning most abortions at about six weeks will not go into effect after a judge temporarily halted implementation, the state Supreme Court has ruled. is pending.
Judge Clifton Newman issued the ruling just 24 hours after Gov. Henry McMaster signed the bill into law. The ruling means that South Carolina’s earlier ban of about 20 weeks after fertilization is still in place.
Newman said the status quo should be maintained until the Supreme Court reconsiders its decision. “It’s going to end there.”
gave The law was passed on Tuesday. Similar to the General Assembly’s ban on abortion when cardiac activity is detected that lawmakers passed in 2021.
The state Supreme Court ruled in a 3-2 decision that the 2021 law violated the state constitution’s right to privacy. Legislative leaders said the new law makes technical changes that should cause at least one justice to change his mind, and the author of the January ruling has retired.
The law went into effect as soon as it was signed, and Planned Parenthood immediately filed a lawsuit, saying it forced South Carolina abortion clinics and doctors to consider the new rules. Suspended with reviewed as well as canceled patient appointments.
Abortion rights groups said the new law is too similar to the old law to harm clinics and women seeking treatment if it is allowed to remain in place pending a full judicial review.
The majority opinion in the state Supreme Court ruling struck down the 2021 law, saying that while lawmakers have the right to protect life, the privacy clause in the state constitution ultimately gives women time to decide whether She wants an abortion and most women want an abortion. Don’t know they are pregnant until six weeks after conception.
Justice Kay Hearn wrote the opinion. She then had to retire as she turned 72 and was replaced by a man, making South Carolina the only high court bench in the nation without a woman.
The changes in the new law drew the attention of another justice in the majority, John Few, who wrote his opinion that the 2021 law was poorly written because lawmakers did not show that it did anything to determine whether Six weeks was plenty of time. A woman knows that she is pregnant.
Few suggested that it would have made an even stricter constitutional ban on abortion, arguing that if the fetus had all the rights of a person, the ban would have been limited to child abuse or rape. There will be similar laws that do not violate privacy rights.
The new law includes exceptions for fatal fetal anomalies, life and health of the patient, and rape or rape up to 12 weeks. Doctors can face serious charges that include up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Most southern states have enacted stricter abortion laws in the past year, and abortion opponents say that’s why South Carolina has seen a sharp increase in the number of out-of-state abortion patients. I have come
Most of the South has a ban or strict ban on abortion, including bans during pregnancy in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. In Georgia, it is only allowed in the first six weeks.
Most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy will be banned in North Carolina starting July 1 after the state’s Republican-controlled legislature successfully overrode the Democratic governor’s veto earlier this month.