Planned Parenthood attorneys argued ban should not apply until 9 weeks
By Skylar Laird
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — A judge ruled South Carolina’s abortion ban should remain in effect at six weeks of pregnancy, not nine, as abortion providers argued.
Circuit Court Judge Daniel Coble threw out a request from Planned Parenthood, which asked the court to bar the state from enforcing the law until questions are answered over its timing. The case centered not around whether the law is constitutional — the Supreme Court already ruled it is — but when, exactly, it begins.
Lawmakers “could not have been more clear” that they intended the ban to begin at six weeks, Coble wrote in a ruling released late Thursday.
Often referred to as a “heartbeat law,” the rule says doctors can not perform abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detectable.
But during arguments earlier this month, Planned Parenthood attorney Kyla Eastling pointed to a clause in South Carolina’s law that defines a heartbeat as “cardiac activity, or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart, within the gestational sac.”
The electrical impulse doctors can detect via ultrasound at six weeks “is not steady; it is not repetitive; and it is not rhythmic,” Eastling said at the time. That’s not the case until an actual heart forms around nine weeks of pregnancy, she argued.
The state’s experts countered that those electrical impulses function in essentially the same way as a heart, pumping blood through the embryo, even if the four chambers of a heart have not yet taken shape.
Coble declined to suspend the law, calling that “a drastic measure,” particularly in a case the Supreme Court already upheld.
The Supreme Court left the door open to the question of timing after its 4-1 ruling last August determining that the current ban is constitutional.
“We leave for another day… the meaning of ‘fetal heartbeat’ and whether the statutory definition — ‘cardiac activity, or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart, within the gestational sac’ — refers to one period of time during a pregnancy or two separate periods of time,” Justice John Kittredge wrote in the majority opinion.
“That day is now upon us, and a decision must be made,” Coble wrote in his ruling, first reported by The State.
Planned Parenthood will fight the ruling and continue to challenge the rule’s time frame, the organization said in a statement Friday. It is likely the Supreme Court will end up settling the case, after refusing to take it up directly last November.
Coble’s job, he wrote, was not to decide between the two time frames but instead to determine whether the law was clear.
Looking just at what’s written, the definition “is not clear,” Coble wrote. Instead, he relied on more than a dozen instances in which lawmakers, both for and against the law, referred to it as a six-week ban. Based on that, he “believes that there is no doubt” in the timeframe.
A spokesman for Gov. Henry McMaster called the ruling “another legal victory” for the state’s abortion ban.
“Life will continue to be protected in South Carolina, and the governor will continue his fight to protect it,” spokesman Brandon Charochak said in a statement.
The case focused on Taylor Shelton, a Lowcountry resident, who found out she was pregnant last September despite having an intrauterine device, a form of birth control.
Shelton quickly realized she was pregnant but couldn’t get an appointment for an abortion in South Carolina before the six-week cutoff. So, she drove to North Carolina, where abortions are allowed until 12 weeks of pregnancy.
She had to take three trips and spend more than 20 hours in the car, she told reporters after a hearing earlier this month.
Planned Parenthood was disappointed in the ruling and vowed that “the fight is not over,” said Jenny Black, president of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, in a statement.
“Given the impact of this case on thousands of patients across South Carolina who have been unfairly denied abortion care, we will continue to demand that the courts apply the law as written,” Black said in the statement.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau.
S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
