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Date: 01-05-2023
Case Style:
Case Number: 2022-001062
Judge: Hearn
Court: Supreme Court of South Carolina
Plaintiff's Attorney: M. Malissa Burnette, Kathleen McColl McDaniel, and
Grant Burnette LeFever, of Burnette Shutt & McDaniel,
PA, of Columbia, for Petitioners.
Defendant's Attorney: Attorney General Alan McCrory Wilson, Solicitor
General Robert D. Cook, Deputy Solicitor General J.
Emory Smith, Jr., and Assistant Deputy Solicitor General
Thomas Tyler Hydrick, all of Columbia, for Respondents
the State of South Carolina, Alan McCrory Wilson, in his
official capacity as Attorney General of the State of South
Carolina, and William Walter Wilkins III, in his official
capacity as Solicitor for South Carolina's 13th Judicial
Circuit.
Description: Today we consider whether The Fetal Heartbeat and Protection
from Abortion Act ("the Act") violates a woman's constitutional right to privacy, as
guaranteed in article I, section 10 of the South Carolina Constitution. We hold that
the decision to terminate a pregnancy rests upon the utmost personal and private
considerations imaginable, and implicates a woman's right to privacy. While this
right is not absolute, and must be balanced against the State's interest in protecting
unborn life, this Act, which severely limits—and in many instances completely
forecloses—abortion, is an unreasonable restriction upon a woman's right to privacy
and is therefore unconstitutional.1: Today we consider whether The Fetal Heartbeat and Protection
from Abortion Act ("the Act") violates a woman's constitutional right to privacy, as
guaranteed in article I, section 10 of the South Carolina Constitution. We hold that
the decision to terminate a pregnancy rests upon the utmost personal and private
considerations imaginable, and implicates a woman's right to privacy. While this
right is not absolute, and must be balanced against the State's interest in protecting
unborn life, this Act, which severely limits—and in many instances completely
forecloses—abortion, is an unreasonable restriction upon a woman's right to privacy
and is therefore unconstitutional.1
See: https://www.sccourts.org/opinions/HTMLFiles/SC/28127.pdf
Outcome: Political questions surrounding abortion have produced as much impassioned
disagreement as any issue of our time. When those political questions intersect with
questions of law, advocates on both sides of the political questions seem to believe
that the more fervently they hold their political views, the more likely those views
will become someone else's legal views. We have been asked in this case to ignore
well-established principles of law in order to uphold the Fetal Heartbeat Act, and to
create new and novel principles of law to strike down the Act. The parties who made
these requests derive their positions not from sound legal reasoning, but from fervent
political advocacy. These well-intentioned parties act on the basis of their politics.
The Court must act on the basis of law. The article I, section 10 prohibition on
"unreasonable invasions of privacy" is a principle of law. The six-week ban in the
Fetal Heartbeat Act violates the provision because—as a matter of law—it is an
unreasonable intrusion into a pregnant woman's right of privacy. The Fetal
Heartbeat Act is, therefore, unconstitutional.
Plaintiff's Experts:
Defendant's Experts:
Comments: