South Carolina’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s law protecting preborn children from abortion beginning at six weeks in a 4-1 decision on Wednesday. The law will take effect immediately.
Senate Bill 474, the “Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act,” prohibits abortion once a preborn child’s heartbeat can be detected. The heart first begins to beat at about 16-21 days post-fertilization but can not typically be detected by ultrasound until the preborn child is a six-week embryo. The law includes exceptions for the life or health of the mother, medical emergencies, and fatal fetal diagnosis, and allows babies to be killed by abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy if they were conceived in rape or incest. Induced abortion is never medically necessary because a baby never has to be intentionally killed prior to delivery in order to end a pregnancy. Preterm delivery for health reasons and medical emergencies, as well as surgery for ectopic pregnancies, are not legally considered abortions.
Justice John Kittredge, writing for the majority, said that the pro-life law “infringes on a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy,” but said that “virtually every law operates in some manner to limit a person’s privacy.” He also wrote that the woman’s right to privacy does not outweigh “the interest of the unborn child to live.”
In addition, he cited Planned Parenthood S. Atl. v. State, in which he dissented, stating, “For example, no rational person would contend the State does not have the authority to enact laws criminalizing assault, rape, theft, child abuse, drug trafficking, and the like. In these and so many other areas, the power of the State to regulate and prohibit conduct is unquestioned. There is not the slightest prospect that a court would contravene the will of the people, as codified by their elected representatives, because the law amounts to an invasion of privacy.”
The ruling comes about eight months after the South Carolina Supreme Court struck down a similar law protecting preborn children beginning at six weeks of pregnancy. Justice Kaye Hearn, who wrote the majority opinion striking down that law in January, has since reached the court’s mandatory retirement age. She was replaced by Gary Hill, making the court, according to media reports, “all-male.” Though abortion advocates are blaming the lack of a female judge for the upholding of the pro-life law, it was also an all-male U.S. Supreme Court that forced abortion on every state in Roe v. Wade in 1973.
Following Hill’s appointment to the court, a new law was written addressing Justice John Few’s concern from the January decision, which was that the legislature had not fully taken into account if the law had strong enough reasoning to infringe on a woman’s right to privacy.
Few also joined the majority this time around but this time in keeping the law intact, writing that a woman’s right to privacy does not offer blanket protections against “reasonable” laws such as protecting children from abortion.
