South Carolina top court appears open to upholding new abortion ban [View all]
June 27 (Reuters) - South Carolina's highest court on Tuesday appeared open to upholding a new state law banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, months after it blocked a similar ban.
Abortion providers, led by Planned Parenthood, last month won a court order temporarily blocking the law from taking effect until their lawsuit challenging it could be heard by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
That court ruled 3-2 in January that an earlier abortion law violated the right to privacy guaranteed by the state constitution.
However, the author of that ruling, Justice Kaye Hearn, has since retired. South Carolina's Republican legislature in February replaced Hearn, who was the sole woman on the five-member court, with Justice Garrison Hill.
Both the earlier law and the newer law sought to ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. That usually happens around six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/south-carolina-top-court-appears-open-upholding-new-abortion-ban-2023-06-27/
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