Planned Parenthood South Atlantic v. State of South Carolina III

Description:  Planned Parenthood is challenging South Carolina’s pro-life law that protects unborn children from the moment a heartbeat is detected.

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erin Hawley, vice president of the ADF Center for Life and Regulatory Practice, regarding the South Carolina Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday in Planned Parenthood South Atlantic v. State of South Carolina to uphold the state’s law protecting unborn children from abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected:

“All human life is worth protecting, and the people of South Carolina have been eager to affirm life and prevent the obvious harms that abortion causes women and their children. Now, with this decision from the South Carolina Supreme Court, the state can continue to protect the lives of innumerable unborn children. We commend the South Carolina Legislature and Gov. McMaster for enacting a pro-life law that relies on sound medical science and statistical evidence, which shows that a detectable fetal heartbeat reliably and overwhelmingly predicts a healthy live birth. The state’s high court was right to uphold this law, which is critical for protecting mothers and their unborn babies.”

“[T]he General Assembly relied on medical and scientific knowledge … in drawing the correlation it found so important. All of the medical and scientific knowledge that has been shown to us in this case points to the same early ‘cardiac activity’ detectable as electric impulses on an ultrasound—which we held at the outset of this opinion marks the ‘fetal heartbeat’—as the point in time that indicates an unborn child is likely to reach live birth,” the court wrote in its opinion.

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

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