Republicans finally won a long-awaited victory when South Carolina’s highest court upheld a ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Republicans have repeatedly run into roadblocks in their attempts to further limit the procedure.
The 4-to-1 decision effectively overturns a decision from earlier this year, when the court had declared that a law banning abortion in the first few weeks of pregnancy — known as the “fetal heartbeat bill” — was unconstitutional because it infringed on a state constitution-guaranteed right to privacy. South Carolina, one of the few Southern states that had maintained robust abortion access, will now have significantly less access to abortions as a result of the decision.
The majority opinion, written by Justice John Kittredge, stated that while the six-week ban “infringes on a woman’s right to privacy and bodily autonomy,” it is the responsibility of the state legislature to make policy decisions.
He said lawmakers decided that after a certain point in pregnancy, a woman’s right “does not outweigh the interest of the unborn child to live.”
“Through the legal and judicial lens under which we must operate, while mindful of the difficult and emotional issue before us, we cannot say as a matter of law that the 2023 Act is unreasonable and thus violates the state constitution,” Kittredge wrote.
“After the South Carolina Supreme Court struck down a prior six-week ban in January, the female justice who authored that opinion retired. That cleared the way for the state legislature to appoint a replacement, giving South Carolina the only all-male state supreme court in the country,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
Over the objections of a few female Republican lawmakers, the legislature later passed a new six-week ban, which swiftly brought the case back before the high court.
Republican Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina referred to the decision made on Wednesday as a “historic moment” for the state and said it had been in the works for years.
“The events in South Carolina underscore how volatile abortion rights could remain for years to come. Unlike U.S. Supreme Court justices, state Supreme Court justices are often elected and typically don’t have lifetime tenure. That potentially tees up repeated legal battles when the composition of the courts changes. In Iowa the legislature passed a six-week ban on abortion this summer, just weeks after the state’s highest court deadlocked on whether to revive a 2018 law, leaving a permanent block in place,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
A new survey contains a lot of bad news for the Democratic Party and Presiden Joe Biden as the 2024 campaign cycle begins in earnest.
According to a new Newsweek tracker poll the outlet launched this week, Democrats’ pet issues like abortion and the environment are far down the list of what is most important to a majority of Americans.
According to the survey, which was conducted on July 15 and 16 among 1,500 eligible voters, the economy remains, by far, the most important issue, with 60 percent indicating as much — and at a time when gas prices are rising again, food prices remain high, interest rates have skyrocketed leading to far higher mortgage and auto loan costs, and a growing percentage of Americans have seen their buying power decrease under President Biden.
“Most voters—48 percent—said they were worse off now than they were three years ago. A further 29 percent said they were better off and 22 percent said they were about the same,” Newsweek reported, citing its survey results. “Forty-four percent said their financial situation has worsened in the last year, compared to 28 percent who said it had improved and another 28 percent who said it had stayed the same.”
The next three top issues are also not necessarily strong ones for Democrats.
According to the survey’s findings, 33 percent said healthcare was the most important, followed by 28 percent who named immigration as their top concern and 24 percent who said it is policing and crime.
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