COLUMBIA, S.C. (Tuesday, July 26, 2022) Circuit Judge Casey Manning declined Planned Parenthood’s request today to block the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act and instead sent the issue directly to the South Carolina Supreme Court to decide.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, Greenville Women’s Clinic, and two doctors sued the State of South Carolina to overturn the Fetal Heartbeat Act after the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the federal injunction following the United State Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey on
June 24, 2022.
In making his decision, Judge Manning said, the case “will stop in the Supreme Court. Why shouldn’t it start in the Supreme Court?” His decision means the Fetal Heartbeat Act will remain in effect for now.
Solicitor General Bob Cook of the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office encouraged Judge Manning to grant the Attorney General’s “motion for original jurisdiction.” That means sending the case to the high court to decide first.
A Planned Parenthood attorney argued that the two abortion facilities it runs in South Carolina are losing half their business with the Fetal Heartbeat Act in effect.
The State Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) Abortion Report for 2021 shows that the Planned Parenthood facilities in Charleston and Columbia collectively killed 3,604 babies waiting to be born in South Carolina. That is 57 percent of the 6,279 abortions committed in South Carolina in 2021.
The Greenville Women’s Clinic, also a plaintiff in the lawsuit to overturn the Fetal Heartbeat Act, killed 2,603 unborn babies in 2021, according to the DHEC report. Planned Parenthood killed 1,832 unborn black babies while Greenville Women’s Center killed 1,031 unborn back children, according to DHEC records.
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