(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The South Carolina Supreme Court overturned the state’s fetal heartbeat bill that prevented abortions after a detectable heartbeat. The court decided that the law violated the “right to privacy” enshrined in the state’s constitution.
According to the Post Millennial, Justice Kaye Hearn authored the opinion.
“The State unquestionably has the authority to limit the right of privacy that protects women from state interference with her decision, but any such limitation must be reasonable and it must be meaningful in that the time frames imposed must afford a woman sufficient time to determine she is pregnant and to take reasonable steps to terminate that pregnancy,” the opinion reads.
Hearn concluded, stating that six weeks—the time when a heartbeat is usually detectable—is “quite simply, not a reasonable period of time.”
The Court’s decision reverts the limitation to 20 weeks for a woman to get an abortion.
The Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. wade in June of 2022, leaving the decision up to the states. Several states decided their laws in the following midterm elections, but the state of South Carolina defaulted to a previous abortion restriction.
The state’s Supreme Court did suspend the law in August while considering a legal challenge from plaintiffs represented by lawyers associated with Planned Parenthood.
Abortion advocates are working to make abortions of all kinds more accessible. The Department of Justice recently allowed postal services to deliver abortifacients to states where the practice has been strictly limited, in a shocking subversion of state authority.
The Food and Drug Administration also ruled in favor of pharmacies pushing abortion pills. One of the labs pushing the pills said the change “is critically important to expanding access to medication abortion services and will provide healthcare providers.”
Leftist politicians are also pushing to make abortion more accessible in rural areas of the country.
