Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, et al. v. State of South Carolina, et al.

Today we consider whether The Fetal Heartbeat and Protection

from Abortion Act ("the Act") violates a woman's constitutional right to privacy, as

guaranteed in article I, section 10 of the South Carolina Constitution. We hold that

the decision to terminate a pregnancy rests upon the utmost personal and private

considerations imaginable, and implicates a woman's right to privacy. While this

right is not absolute, and must be balanced against the State's interest in protecting

unborn life, this Act, which severely limits—and in many instances completely

forecloses—abortion, is an unreasonable restriction upon a woman's right to privacy

and is therefore unconstitutional.1: Today we consider whether The Fetal Heartbeat and Protection

from Abortion Act ("the Act") violates a woman's constitutional right to privacy, as

guaranteed in article I, section 10 of the South Carolina Constitution. We hold that

the decision to terminate a pregnancy rests upon the utmost personal and private

considerations imaginable, and implicates a woman's right to privacy. While this

right is not absolute, and must be balanced against the State's interest in protecting

unborn life, this Act, which severely limits—and in many instances completely

forecloses—abortion, is an unreasonable restriction upon a woman's right to privacy

and is therefore unconstitutional.1



See: https://www.sccourts.org/opinions/HTMLFiles/SC/28127.pdf

Political questions surrounding abortion have produced as much impassioned

disagreement as any issue of our time. When those political questions intersect with

questions of law, advocates on both sides of the political questions seem to believe

that the more fervently they hold their political views, the more likely those views

will become someone else's legal views. We have been asked in this case to ignore

well-established principles of law in order to uphold the Fetal Heartbeat Act, and to

create new and novel principles of law to strike down the Act. The parties who made

these requests derive their positions not from sound legal reasoning, but from fervent

political advocacy. These well-intentioned parties act on the basis of their politics.

The Court must act on the basis of law. The article I, section 10 prohibition on

"unreasonable invasions of privacy" is a principle of law. The six-week ban in the

Fetal Heartbeat Act violates the provision because—as a matter of law—it is an

unreasonable intrusion into a pregnant woman's right of privacy. The Fetal

Heartbeat Act is, therefore, unconstitutional.