South Carolina.- The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a state law banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy is unconstitutional because it violates the right to privacy.
The Court’s ruling delivers a major victory for advocates of the right to legal termination of pregnancy in the southern United States.
The 2021 law, which banned abortion after about six weeks gestation and often before a woman knows she is pregnant, took effect after the US Supreme Court struck down the longstanding right to abortion in June. established by the case Roe v. Wade from 1973.
Planned Parenthood challenged the law and the five-judge state Supreme Court blocked it in August pending a decision in the case.
“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 3-2 opinion released Thursday.
The ruling will provide broader legal protections for abortion access in the southern state, which neighbors many states that have banned the practice in most cases since the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
