The law is being enforced in South Carolina as a ban on almost all abortions around six weeks after conception, setting that mark as the time cardiac activity starts.
But Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups are arguing the 2023 law includes alternative definitions about the timing of a fetal heart forming and a “heartbeat” starting and the true ban should start around nine or 10 weeks.
Both sides are set to argue for just over an hour at the South Carolina Supreme Court in Columbia. The justices likely will take several months to decide the case. In the meantime, the abortion ban around six weeks likely will remain in place after a lower court upheld it.
The 2023 law says abortions cannot be performed after an ultrasound can detect “cardiac activity, or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart, within the gestational sac.”
South Carolina and several other states place that at six weeks into development. But what follows the “or” in the sentence could require that a heart has formed, and medical experts say that doesn’t happen until around nine weeks.
The legal fight has been brewing since the state Supreme Court reversed itself after overturning a similar ban in 2021. The Republican-dominated General Assembly then made small changes and a justice who voted in the majority in the 3-2 decision to overturn the ban reached retirement age and was replaced.
Currently, 13 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and South Carolina and three others have bans that kick in at or about six weeks into pregnancy.
