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| Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall |
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act into law in February, and pro-abortion groups filed a lawsuit against it the following day. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis placed an injunction blocking the law's enforcement soon afterward.
The law requires abortionists to provide ultrasounds for mothers before committing an abortion, and it bans abortionists from aborting a child whose heartbeat is detected during that ultrasound. Abortionists who violate the law could face felony charges, fines, and jail time. The law includes exceptions for medical emergencies, rape, incest, and fetal diagnoses.
South Carolina appealed the district court's injunction last week, arguing that the pro-abortion organizations lacked the legal standing to bring a lawsuit. South Carolina also argued that only the heartbeat provision (not the ultrasound requirements) should be blocked by the injunction, since that is the provision being challenged in court.
“South Carolina’s fetal heartbeat law was struck down in an error-filled district court opinion,” Marshall said in a press release. “Although Planned Parenthood and the other plaintiffs challenged only the law’s regulation of abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, the district court enjoined the law in its entirety — including portions of the law that dozens of other states already have and regularly enforce.”
