TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Jan 5, 2023

South Carolina's Supreme Court ruled today that a 2021 state law banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy is unconstitutional because it violates a right to privacy. The state law took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the right to abortion that had been established by the 1973 Roe v. Wade case. Planned Parenthood challenged the law and today, the court ruled 3-2 in its favor. "We hold that our state constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion," Justice Kaye Hearn wrote in the majority opinion. Hearn went on to say that the state can set some limits on abortion, but any regulation should give a woman "sufficient time to determine she is pregnant and to take reasonable steps to terminate that pregnancy." Six weeks was "not a reasonable period of time," Hearn concluded. Reuters reports on the decision.