South Carolina Supreme Court Unanimously Rules to Uphold State’s 6-Week Abortion Ban

The 5–0 decision this week came in response to a challenge to the current state law from Planned Parenthood.

The South Carolina State House in Columbia, South Carolina, on May 16, 2023. Logan Cyrus/AFP/Getty Images

The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled this week to uphold the state’s fetal heartbeat law, allowing the state to continue the ban on abortions starting at around six weeks of gestation.

The 5-0 decision, issued on Wednesday, came in response to a challenge from Planned Parenthood to the state law. The justices ruled that the medical language in the 2023 law was vague but noted that both opponents and supporters of the measure believe that it bans abortions after six weeks.

The law says abortions cannot be performed after an ultrasound can detect “cardiac activity, or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart, within the gestational sac,“ and that ”cardiac activity begins at a biologically identifiable moment in time, normally when the fetal heart is formed in the gestational sac.”

The justices said there was medical imprecision in South Carolina’s heartbeat provision, which is similar to language in the laws in several other states. But they said this drove them to study the intent of the General Assembly, which left no doubt that lawmakers on both sides of the issue saw it as a six-week ban.

“Not one of the terms the General Assembly used in the definition—not ‘cardiac activity’ nor ‘steady,’ ‘repetitive,’ ‘rhythmic,’ ‘contraction,’ ‘fetal heart,’ nor even ‘gestational sac,’—is a precise medically defined term,” state Supreme Court Associate Justice John Few wrote in the decision.

Because lawmakers understood the law to mean that abortions should be banned in the state at six weeks, that is how lawmakers should interpret the 2023 act, the court said.

But Few said that the court has counted “at least sixty separate instances during the 2023 legislative session in which a member of the House or Senate referred to the 2023 Act as a six-week ban on abortion, many of which specifically referenced the Court’s analysis of the 2021 Act.”

“We could find not one instance during the entire 2023 legislative session in which anyone connected in any way to the General Assembly framed the Act as banning abortion after approximately nine weeks,” he said.

“While we do not frame our holding today in the shorthand terms of a number of weeks, the biologically identifiable moment in time we hold is the ‘fetal heartbeat’ under the 2023 Act occurs in most instances at approximately six weeks of pregnancy.”

The law, known as the Fetal Heartbeat Protection from Abortion Act, states that such cardiac activity occurs at around six weeks following conception. Planned Parenthood had challenged the law’s language in state court, arguing in court papers that a fetal heartbeat cannot occur until the four chambers of the heart have been formed.

After the ruling was handed down Wednesday, Planned Parenthood pledged to keep challenging the ban and said that it would damage the state health care system.

“Justice did not prevail today, and the people of South Carolina are paying the price. People have been forced to carry pregnancies against their will, suffered life-threatening infections, and died as a direct result of this abortion ban,” Planned Parenthood South Atlantic CEO Paige Johnson said in a statement.

Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, however, issued a statement hailing the decision as “another clear and decisive victory that will ensure the lives of countless unborn children remain protected and that South Carolina continues to lead the charge in defending the sanctity of life.”

Pro-life groups also praised the ruling.

“Planned Parenthood has failed in attempting to rewrite the science of human development to further their agenda for more abortions and more profit,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Political Director Caitlin Connors said in a statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.