Court temporarily halts South Carolina abortion ban; Florida court rejects 16-year-old’s plea for abortion

Columbia, August 19 (RHC)-- South Carolina’s Supreme Court has temporarily blocked enforcement of the state’s six-week ban on abortions while a legal challenge to the law proceeds.  

Reproductive rights groups are suing to overturn South Carolina’s so-called fetal heartbeat law, which bans abortions once electrical activity can be detected in an embryo’s cardiac cells, which typically happens around just six weeks into a pregnancy.

In North Carolina, a federal judge has reinstated that state’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

In Louisiana, all three clinics that previously offered abortion care have closed their doors and will relocate to other states, after the state Supreme Court ruled Friday that a near-total abortion ban can remain in effect across Louisiana.

Meanwhile, a court in Florida has ordered a 16-year-old orphan to carry her pregnancy to term after she petitioned the court for the right to have an abortion, testifying that she was “not ready to have a baby.”  A three-judge panel denied the request, ruling the girl “had not established … that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.”