COLUMBIA, S.C. (Wednesday, February 12, 2025) – The South Carolina Supreme Court declined a request Wednesday by abortion giant Planned Parenthood to stop the enforcement of the state’s Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act while it considers arguments alleging the law is
“unconstitutionally vague.” That means the state’s 2023 Fetal Heartbeat law continues to protect unborn children with beating hearts in South Carolina while the high court deliberates.
The five State Supreme Court justices - four of whom previously upheld the Fetal Heartbeat Act, and one newly
elected member of the court - heard Planned Parenthood’s appeal of 5th Circuit Judge Daniel Coble’s May 20, 2024, ruling upholding the heartbeat law. Planned Parenthood brought that case after the State Supreme Court previously upheld the 2023 law but left open the question of exactly when the fetal heartbeat occurs.
In the 2023 ruling, the Supreme
Court stated, “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 gestation sac’ refers to one period of time during a pregnancy or two separate periods of time.”
Chief Justice John Kittredge, and Justices
John Few, George James, and Garrison Hill all previously upheld the 2023 Fetal Heartbeat law. The newly elected Justice Letitia Verdin joined the Supreme Court in 2024.
Planned Parenthood argued that the “fetal” heart is not a heart until after the ninth week of pregnancy when the four heart chambers are formed and therefore abortion should be legal
through the ninth week of pregnancy. The largest killer of unborn children in South Carolina also complained that its abortion business has declined by 75 percent as a result of the Fetal Heartbeat Act.
Judge Coble’s comprehensive 29-page order shredded the abortion industry’s third attempt to strike down the law protecting the unborn child whose
heartbeat can be detected, generally by the sixth week of pre-natal life. He cited 20 documented instances of the South Carolina General Assembly’s understanding that the fetal heartbeat can be detected at least by the sixth week of the baby’s life. He cited 60 instances of the State Supreme Court and circuit courts referring to the fetal heartbeat law as a six-week limit that protects the unborn with a beating heart from death by abortion.
While the five justices declined Wednesday to issue an injunction stopping the enforcement of the Fetal Heartbeat Act while it decides the case, there was no indication on how quickly a decision might be rendered.
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