South Carolina's heartbeat bill is called the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act. After it was signed into law in 2023 by Gov. Henry McMaster, Planned Parenthood predictably filed suit to challenge the law.
Holly Gatling, of South Carolina Citizens for Life, says Circuit Court Judge Daniel Coble deserves credit for a ruling that denied a request to put the law on hold.
In his ruling, Judge Coble wrote he would never use his authority as a judge to change the will of the state legislature by giving his own interpretation of state law. To do so, the judge wrote, is to violate the U.S. Constitution and the separation of powers.
“In other words,” Gatling tells AFN, “he upheld the heartbeat bill as it was written by our legislature and signed into law by our governor.”
In a related story at LifeNews.com, Gatling writes that Planned Parenthood argued a fetal heartbeat is not detected until nine weeks into a pregnancy.
Judge Coble’s ruling “shredded” that argument in a 29-page order, she says, which documented how state lawmakers passed the bill with the knowledge of a six-week heartbeat detected in the womb.
