COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s new all-male Excellent Courtroom reversed route on abortion on Wednesday, upholding a ban on maximum such procedures after about six weeks of being pregnant.
The 4-1 ruling departs from the court docket’s personal choice previous this yr to strike down a an identical regulation.
The ongoing erosion of criminal abortion get admission to around the U.S. South comes after Republican state lawmakers changed the lone feminine at the court docket, Justice Kaye Hearn.
Writing for the brand new majority, Justice John Kittredge said that the 2023 regulation infringes on “a lady’s proper of privateness and physically autonomy,” however stated the state legislature quite made up our minds this time round that the ones pursuits don’t outweigh “the hobby of the unborn kid to reside.”
“As a Courtroom, until we will say that the steadiness struck through the legislature used to be unreasonable as an issue of regulation, we will have to uphold the Act,” Kittredge wrote.
It used to be Hearn who wrote the bulk’s lead opinion in January placing down the ban. The court docket dominated then that the regulation violated the state charter’s proper to privateness.
Hearn then reached the court docket’s obligatory retirement age, enabling the Republican-dominated legislature to position Gary Hill on what’s now the country’s best state Excellent Courtroom with a wholly male bench.
With a newly configured Excellent Courtroom, Republican lawmakers enacted a brand new abortion regulation in 2023 that they idea would move muster a 2nd time round. Particularly, the regulation used to be crafted to deal with Justice John Few’s fear, expressed within the January ruling, that lawmakers didn’t be mindful whether or not the abortion restrictions had been affordable sufficient to infringe upon privateness rights in choose of the appropriate to lifestyles.
Abortion suppliers, together with Deliberate Parenthood South Atlantic, sued once more.
Hill joined Wednesday’s majority together with Few, who had in the past voted to overturn the 2021 regulation.
For the reason that U.S. Excellent Courtroom ultimate yr overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that supplied national get admission to to abortion, maximum GOP-controlled states have enacted or followed abortion bans of a few sort. All had been challenged in court docket.