The State: “A federal judge temporarily blocked South Carolina’s new “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban Friday, a day after Gov. Henry McMaster signed the state’s restrictive new abortion bill into law in front of a crowd of enthusiastic supporters at the State House.
South Carolina’s new law — passed by Republican majorities in the S.C. House and Senate — bans most abortions after six weeks, when the law’s supporters say a heartbeat can be detected in the developing fetus. The law also also criminalizes most abortions after six weeks and provides for a two-year maximum prison sentence for any doctor who performs an illegal abortion.
At Friday’s hearing, U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis — an Obama appointee — gently reminded a top attorney from State Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office that South Carolina’s new law violates nearly 50 years of established law. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Roe v. Wade case that women have a constitutional right to an abortion up to six months of pregnancy. At that point, a fetus can live outside the mother’s body.”