The South Carolina law – the first of these restrictions passed in 2021 as anti-abortion advocates seek to limit access to the procedure – would block the procedure in detecting a fetal heartbeat, which can occur as early as six weeks pregnant and before many people know they are pregnant.
U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis issued a temporary restraining order over the law until March 5. The South Carolina law now brings together nine other so-called gestational bans – which prohibit abortions after a certain point in pregnancy – passed in 2019, none of which took effect.
Lewis wrote that abortion providers demonstrated “a substantial probability of success” in their arguments that the law violated the rights of those seeking abortion, calling the law “a manifestly unconstitutional ban on predictable abortions”.
Proponents of abortion rights quickly expressed opposition to the new law, which the South Carolina General Assembly passed on Wednesday and ended on Thursday.
Before being signed by Republican Governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, on Thursday, Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights contested the measure. The lawyers for the groups asked a federal judge to block the law on behalf of abortion providers Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and Greenville Women’s Clinic, which operate the only three abortion clinics in South Carolina, according to court documents.
“This court decision will provide a temporary moment of relief for South Carolinaers,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement. “But make no mistake: politicians across the country have made it clear that they will not stop until access to abortion is completely out of reach.”
As of Friday morning, at least 75 patients had abortion appointments scheduled at Planned Parenthood and Greenville Women’s Clinic, according to Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic spokeswoman Molly Rivera told CNN that they stopped having abortions as soon as the governor signed the bill.
“Access has been restored,” Rivera said after the judge’s order. “Abortion services can be resumed.”
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who was quoted in the lawsuit, called the blockade “just a first step, but the legal fight has just begun. We look forward to further discussing why this law should be valid.”
“We believe that the Heartbeat Act is constitutional and deserves a vigorous defense in the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary,” Wilson said in a statement. “Each generation has the right and the duty to revisit issues as important as this one.”
The law includes exceptions for cases of rape, incest – both of which doctors must report to the county sheriff within 24 hours – medical emergencies and fetal anomalies. It also requires that providers of abortion perform an ultrasound and display the image to the pregnant woman and “ask the woman if she would like to hear the heartbeat”, if audible – a medically unnecessary requirement that the Supreme Court has previously allowed effect in other states.
Amanda Watts of CNN contributed to this report.