The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the state’s fetal heartbeat law is unconstitutional because it violates the state constitution’s privacy protections.
The South Carolina Legislature signed the Fetal Heartbeat Act into law in February of 2021, which prohibited abortion after a detectable heartbeat (usually around six weeks of pregnancy). On Thursday, the state’s high court ruled 3-2 against the pro-life law in a suit brought by Planned Parenthood South Atlantic against the State of South Carolina.
Justice Kaye Hearn penned the lead opinion, ruling that the “state constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman’s decision to have an abortion.” Hearn was joined by Justice Donald Beatty and Justice John Few, both of whom wrote concurring opinions.
“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,” Hearn wrote. “Six weeks is, quite simply, not a reasonable period of time for these two things to occur, and therefore the Act violates our state Constitution’s prohibition against unreasonable invasions of privacy.”
Justice John Kittredge, who was joined in part by Justice George James, wrote in his dissent that, contrary to his colleagues’ claims, South Carolina’s fetal heartbeat law is upheld by the state’s constitution. He also wrote that the state Supreme Court has no business undermining the will of voters by interfering in legislative decisions.
“Aside from the result reached, the majority opinions are notably similar in one particular way: all reject any reliance on the West Committee or legislative history to determine the meaning and reach of the privacy provision in article I, section 10—a stunning departure from settled law,” Kittredge wrote. “I, however, interpret the ambiguous phrase ‘unreasonable invasions of privacy’ in the manner in which its constitutional framers intended it to be read. In doing so, I conclude the Act does not violate the South Carolina Constitution.”
“Abortion presents an important moral and policy issue. The citizens, through their duly elected representatives, have spoken. The South Carolina legislature, not this court, should determine matters of policy,” he added.
Kittredge also called out his colleagues for “rel[ying] on this Court’s 1948 decision in State v. Steadman as the final word on when life begins, as if advances in medical science cannot be considered by subsequent legislatures.”
“Scientific knowledge, of course, has increased significantly through the years, for medical knowledge now establishes ‘evidences of life’ early on in the pregnancy. The detection of a fetal heartbeat approximately six to eight weeks into the pregnancy is an example. That is the precise kind of information considered in the legislative fact-finding process that was relied on in crafting the Act,” he wrote.
President Joe Biden’s White House unsurprisingly praised the court’s decision, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre writing in a tweet that the Biden administration is “encouraged by South Carolina’s Supreme Court ruling today on the state’s extreme and dangerous abortion ban.”
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) slammed the ruling on Thursday, writing in a statement that the state Supreme Court “has found a right in our Constitution which was never intended by the people of South Carolina.”
“With this opinion, the court has clearly exceeded its authority. The people have spoken through their elected representatives multiple times on this issue. I look forward to working with the General Assembly to correct this error,” McMaster continued.
The case is Planned Parenthood South Atlantic v. State of South Carolina, No. 2022-1062 in the Supreme Court of South Carolina.
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