South Carolina Supreme Court Strikes Down State's Oppressive Abortion Ban

The South Carolina Supreme Court struck down the state's 6-week abortion ban this week, saying that it violated the state's constitutional protection of a right to privacy. This particular argument is absolutely crucial to the law being struck down, and it could actually prevent an appeal to the Supreme Court (if that happens) from being successful. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

So we had a lot of insanity this past week folks, but we also had some really good news out of the state of South Carolina of all places. The South Carolina Supreme Court this week voted three to two to strike down the state's six week abortion ban. According to the majority of judges on that panel, the abortion ban that South Carolina had signed into law in 2021. So this was long before the court overturned roe. But the state Supreme Court said, listen, we in our state constitution, were one of 10 states that has a guaranteed right to privacy for our citizens, putting a six week abortion ban in place when most women don't even know they're pregnant by six weeks. That is a massive violation of privacy. Therefore, it violates our state constitution, therefore we strike it down. Now the problem of course, is that striking down the six week ban means they go back to the 20 week ban that had already been in place prior to that.

So you're still not experiencing reproductive freedom in the state of South Carolina if you are a woman, but, but it's not as oppressive as it was prior. So I, I guess that's kind of a small victory here. I, I don't even really know anymore. It's kind of hard to tell because we're still not allowing women complete autonomy over their bodies and that is insane. That is just insane that we are still at this point as a society, as a country, in the year 2023. So it's great that we don't have a six week ban, but again now, okay, well we're just back to the 20 week ban, cuz somehow a 20 week ban doesn't violate your right to privacy, but a six week ban does. Now, the court didn't explain that, so I'm not exactly sure how they reconcile those two things. But I will say making the legal argument based on the right to privacy is a really good idea. Here's why. If this gets challenged, you know, if they appeal, and of course the state is saying right now like, we're gonna try to figure out what our next steps can be. If this goes to the Supreme Court, it suddenly does become that right to privacy issue on a state constitution level. Now, a state constitution, of course, cannot override the federal Constitution, but the Supreme Court cannot override a state constitution

Either. So if this got challenged to the Supreme Court, assuming we had a normal Supreme Court, they would not have a chance to overturn this. Given the makeup of the Supreme Court today, who knows what'll happen. But using that argument was very smart because that makes it very difficult to uphold this law.