South Carolina Supreme Court meets to hear arguments about abortion

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WSPA) – South Carolina’s Top Court heard Planned Parenthood’s challenge to the fetal heartbeat law on Wednesday, which makes it illegal for a woman to have an abortion after the fetal heartbeat is heard.

It was the State v. Planned Parenthood in the discussion about the fetal heartbeat law.

Planned Parenthood’s attorney, Catherine Humphreville, requested an injunction, and said that while the court debates when the fetal heartbeat begins, women in South Carolina should be allowed to have an abortion up until nine weeks.

“We are saying that the absolute earliest that someone is going to call this a fetus is starting at 10 weeks and zero days, or nine weeks and six days,” Humphreville said. “That’s the point where you have an embryo, and you cannot have a fetal heartbeat when you don’t have a fetal heart.”

Thomas Hydrick, lawyer for South Carolina and the attorney general, disagreed. He said around six weeks there is blood flowing, which means the heart is working.

“That we know at about five to six weeks of pregnancy, depending on the pregnancy that an unborn child’s heart starts to perform the function of a heart,” Hydrick said.

Justice John Few asked several questions about how healthcare professionals’ opinions may differ.

“Would you agree though that when medical people would try to answer this question, that some may see it one way and differently than another person?” Few asked.

“I think that it is possible that one person can see it differently than another, and I think that goes to the alternatively vagueness argument,” Humphreville said.

Hydrick argued repeatedly that studies have shown six weeks is when the heart is starting to work.

“Is the unborn child’s earliest form of the heart, I think she describes that maybe as an ‘s’ shape structure, but that is performing the key functions of the heart at that stage,” Hydrick said. “That is where we say the line is to be drawn and it happens to coincide with the six-week range.”

Vicki Ringer, Director of Public Affairs at Planned Parenthood, South Atlantic, said that they are fighting to give women bodily autonomy in South Carolina.

Now both sides wait for a ruling from the State Supreme Court.