South Carolina Supreme Court rules state consitution contains right to privacy, abortion

LINK



The South Carolina Constitution provides a right to privacy that includes the right to abortion, the state’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, saying “the decision to terminate a pregnancy rests upon the utmost personal and private considerations imaginable.”

The decision overturns the state’s law banning abortions after roughly the sixth week of pregnancy. More broadly, it is a victory for abortion rights in the South, where states have severely restricted access.

It is the first final ruling by a state Supreme Court on the state constitutionality of abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, which ended the right to abortion under the federal constitution that had been in force for half a century, and left the matter to the states.

Abortion rights groups responded to that decision by filing suits in 19 states, seeking to establish a right to abortion under state constitutions, in many cases citing explicit provisions in those documents protecting a woman’s privacy and equal rights. The South Carolina case was a critical first test — and success — for that strategy.

“This is a monumental victory in the movement to protect legal abortion in the South,” said Jenny Black, the president of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which was among the groups that filed the case.

The five justices ruled 3-2 that a state ban on abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy violated a provision in the state constitution which says that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures and unreasonable invasions of privacy shall not be violated.”

Even so, the court’s majority said that the right to abortion “was not absolute, and must be balanced against the State’s interest in protecting unborn life.”

The Republican-controlled state legislature may try to test what that means by passing other restrictions on abortion later in pregnancy, but it will be limited by the court’s new broad protection for abortion.

The state’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, said in a statement that he was working with the governor’s office to review “all our available options moving forward.”