COLUMBIA, S.C. — Planned Parenthood South Atlantic (PPSAT) and three medical doctors have filed suit against the State of South Carolina seeking a preliminary injunction of the state's latest 6-week abortion ban, also known as the fetal heart bill.
Parties are scheduled to appear at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, May 2, at the Richland County Courthouse on Main Street in Columbia.
PPSAT, Dr. Katherine Farris (chief medical officer for PPSAT), and Taylor Shelton filed for the preliminary injunction on February 5, asking for clarification on the ban's definition of a "fetal heartbeat." An earlier decision by the South Carolina Supreme Court finding the ban was constitutional allegedly left the definition unclear, according to the plaintiffs.
Dr. Amy Crockett, an OB/GYN and board-certified maternal-fetal medicine specialist licensed in South Carolina and North Carolina, has filed a declaration for the plaintiffs based on her professional knowledge of the growth and development of the embryonic and fetal heart. Crockett states that while contractions of the cell tissue of what will eventually grow into a heart are visible as early as six weeks, the actual four components of a heart (chambers, walls, valves, and conduction system) are formed only after approximately nine weeks.
Together, the plaintiffs seek clarification to the narrow question of at what point in pregnancy the act bans abortion.
Again, according to the court filings, "the Supreme Court declined to clarify the answer when it rejected PPSAT and Dr. Farris’s petition for rehearing on August 29, 2023. On September 14, 2023, Plaintiffs filed a petition for original jurisdiction seeking to answer this question. The Supreme Court denied this petition on November 14, 2023. As a result, there is remaining ambiguity about whether S.B. 474 prohibits abortion at the detection of the earliest embryonic electrical activity, after approximately six weeks of pregnancy as dated from a patient’s last menstrual period (“LMP”), or at the point when the heart forms, after approximately nine weeks of pregnancy LMP."
