Politico: “The South Carolina Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the state’s six-week abortion ban, ruling the privacy rights in the state constitution protect abortion access.
The 3-2 decision allows abortion to remain legal in the state until 20 weeks of pregnancy, and is a setback for Republican lawmakers who had hoped this year to ban abortion after conception.
The majority opinion noted that while the state may limit a person’s right to privacy “any such limitation must be reasonable” and “afford a woman sufficient time to determine she is pregnant and take reasonable steps to terminate that pregnancy.” The court said that six weeks is “quite simply, not a reasonable period of time for those two things to occur.”
Four of the court’s five justices are registered Republicans, while Chief Justice Donald Beatty is a Democrat, and all were appointed by the Republican-controlled legislature.”