Planned Parenthood suit comes after state Supreme Court refuses to directly answer when SC’s ban takes effect
By Skylar Laird
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — The latest challenge to South Carolina’s so-called “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban asks the court to declare nine weeks as the cutoff, giving women three additional weeks to end a pregnancy.
The lawsuit filed Monday by Planned Parenthood in Richland County comes three months after the state Supreme Court refused to directly take abortion providers’ case questioning when in a pregnancy the ban takes effect.
It is filed on behalf of a South Carolina woman who was unable to schedule an abortion in her home state before her sixth week of pregnancy, causing her to make three trips to North Carolina to get an abortion there.
Officially, the law upheld by the state Supreme Court last year bans abortion once an ultrasound detects the sound of cardiac activity. Such a sound can be heard at roughly the sixth week of pregnancy, which is why the law has consistently been called a six-week ban. But abortion providers argue what’s heard at that point is not a heart in a fetus, but rather electrical impulses in a developing embryo.
Fearing the law’s threatened $10,000 fine and two years in prison to doctors who violate it, clinics in South Carolina do not provide abortions past six weeks. However, they argue the ban should apply at nine weeks, when the heart is actually formed. Planned Parenthood is asking the court to clear up the ambiguity. Pending a final decision, Planned Parenthood seeks a preliminary ruling allowing abortions through nine weeks.
Shelton’s experience
The lawsuit centers on the experience of South Carolina resident Taylor Shelton, who learned she was pregnant last September despite having an intrauterine device implant. Because of her IUD and regular menstrual cycles, she quickly realized she’d missed her period. Home pregnancy tests confirmed she was pregnant. Still, she could not get an appointment for an abortion at a clinic in South Carolina before the six-week cutoff.
“I found out that I was pregnant at four weeks with an IUD in place and knew immediately that an abortion was the right decision for me,” Shelton said in a statement.
Getting a legal abortion involved spending roughly 20 hours driving back and forth to clinics in North Carolina, which allows abortions through the first trimester but requires two visits at least 72 hours apart. She was misled by an anti-abortion center in Charlotte on her first trip. She then traveled to Chapel Hill and Wilmington to get an abortion, according to the lawsuit.
“This unwarranted hardship made me feel unbelievably frustrated and terribly confused,” Shelton said. “The entire experience left me angry and quite frankly, traumatized.
I want everyone to understand the impact South Carolina’s abortion restrictions and unfair treatment are having on real people, and I hope my story shows how punitive and cruel these abortion bans actually are,” her statement continued.
When Shelton had her abortion, she was roughly 6 1/2 weeks pregnant. At that point, the heart is still not formed, according to the lawsuit.
“South Carolina’s ban on abortion is harming people like Taylor every day while also sowing chaos and confusion among health care providers across the state,” Planned Parenthood South Atlantic CEO Jenny Black said in a statement.
“No one should have to overcome barrier after barrier or travel across state lines for basic, essential health care,” she continued. “We’re relieved Taylor was ultimately able to get the care she wanted and needed, but too many South Carolinians are unable to do so and must carry pregnancies against their will.”
Shelton realized she was pregnant shortly after the state Supreme Court upheld South Carolina’s abortion ban as constitutional, reversing its decision last January that declared a similar law an unreasonable invasion of privacy that violated the state constitution.
A lawsuit first
It was the author of the 4-1 decision last August who opened the door for a challenge on the ban’s timing. In a footnote of his ruling, he said that would have to be decided later.
“We leave for another day (in an as-applied constitutional challenge) the meaning of ‘fetal heartbeat’ and whether the statutory definition … refers to one period of time during a pregnancy or two separate periods of time,” wrote Justice John Kittredge, who will soon be chief justice.
The next day, abortion providers asked justices to reconsider their ruling, seeking clarity on whether the ban really applied at six weeks. The court refused to reconsider its days-old ruling. But Chief Justice Don Beatty, the only dissenter, seemed to outright encourage a new lawsuit.
“Nothing prevents respondents from expeditiously filing a new complaint” he wrote.
Lawsuits across the country have challenged abortion restrictions since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in July 2022 and sent the legality of abortions back to state legislators.
In one notable case, a Texas woman sued to terminate her pregnancy under the state’s medical exceptions after learning her fetus had a lethal anomaly that could threaten her own health and fertility. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that her situation did not qualify under the state’s law.
Shelton is the first person named in a lawsuit not challenging medical exceptions to an abortion ban, according to Planned Parenthood.
“People are tired of being told they can’t make deeply personal decisions about their own health and medical care,” Black said in a statement.
A spokesman for South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who’s at the top of a list of officials being sued, said he will continue fighting to keep the ban in place.
“We’ve vigorously defended this law in the past and will continue to do so,” Robert Kittle said.
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.
