I’ll bet the Republican officials who passed the law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually at about six weeks, were mighty surprised to find their forced birth law overturned. According to Politico, four of South Carolina's five supreme court justices are registered Republicans and all were appointed by the Republican-controlled legislature.
The majority opinion noted that while the state may limit a person’s right to privacy “any such limitation must be reasonable” and “afford a woman sufficient time to determine she is pregnant and take reasonable steps to terminate that pregnancy.” The court said that six weeks is “quite simply, not a reasonable period of time for those two things to occur.”
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The South Carolina Supreme Court is the first state high court to find a state-level constitutional right to abortion since the fall of Roe v. Wade. Similar challenges are pending in Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Not surprisingly, the Forced Birth Brigade, aka Republicans, are already working to thwart the ruling. More from Politico:
Lawmakers have already introduced a bill prohibiting abortion starting at conception that will be considered during the upcoming legislative session. [Republican state Rep. John] McCravy said he still plans to push for that bill’s passage when lawmakers begin their session on Tuesday.
