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| Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall |
The law was enacted on Feb 18, but it was quickly enjoined by a district judge on March 19. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction, and the law is currently not enforced.
South Carolina's law prohibits abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detectable. It also requires abortionists to give mothers the opportunity to view ultrasound images of their children, hear their fetal heartbeats, and receive other information about them.
In their brief to the Fourth Circuit, the attorneys general argued that the court should not have enjoined the law in its entirety. Instead, they argued that the court could have allowed the state to enforce its disclosure and education requirements separately from the abortion ban.
“At least 24 states currently require an abortion provider to offer to display the image from an ultrasound so the pregnant mother can view it. Yet the courts enjoined South Carolina’s ultrasound disclosure law,” Marshall said. “Same for South Carolina’s requirement that abortion providers make the fetal heartbeat audible for the pregnant mother if she would like to hear it—a law that at least 16 other states have also enacted. And same for South Carolina’s requirement that an ultrasound be performed before an abortion is conducted—a requirement shared by at least 12 other states.
“The courts tread on South Carolina’s sovereign ability to decide for itself the purposes of its legislation, completely ignoring the State General Assembly’s clear intent, written in the text of the law, that if any part of the law were held unconstitutional then the remainder would not be invalidated.”
