COLUMBIA, S.C. — Three top South Carolina Republican officials — Gov. Henry McMaster, House Speaker Jay Lucas and Attorney General Alan Wilson — filed notice on Friday saying they intend to appeal an injunction issued last month by a federal judge that prevents the state's new anti-abortion law from taking effect.
Their notice of appeal says that McMaster, Lucas and Wilson intend to appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the March 19 injunction by U.S. District Judge Mary Lewis that blocked the new law.
In a memorandum last month accompanying her injunction, Judge Lewis said the state's new law is clearly in conflict with nearly 50 years of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that say women have the right to choose to have an abortion up to about the 24th week of pregnancy. At that time, called "viability" by the medical community, a fetus has a chance of survival outside the womb.
Critics say South Carolina's new law would outlaw nearly all abortions in South Carolina and make it possible to send doctors to prison who flout its provisions. The law bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, a time when many women don't even know they are pregnant. Exceptions to the law are rape, incest, threat to the mother's life or health and a fetal defect that is not compatible with life. A doctor would be required to report cases of rape or incest to the local sheriff with or without the woman's consent.
Friday's notice of appeal is a one-page document that says the three officials intend to appeal. A lengthy brief explaining the law and the facts supporting their appeal will likely be filed later with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
In recent statements in court hearings before Lewis, South Carolina officials made it clear they believe new appointments of conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court will lead to the overturning of past high court abortion decisions.
In her March 19 ruling, Judge Lewis rebuked the notion that elected politicians can overthrow long-established legal norms by appointing new judges to courts. "We judges are not politicians in robes," she wrote.
In a related matter, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, a major plaintiff in the case, last week filed a motion for summary judgment with Lewis, asking the judge to dismiss the South Carolina officials' case. A summary judgment motion basically says the other party's case has so little factual or legal basis that it should be thrown out.
Because of the nearly 50 years of court decisions upholding abortion rights, the pleadings by McMaster, Lucas and Wilson do not even present "a close call," lawyers for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic wrote.
South Carolina's new anti-abortion law, passed in mid-February, is among about a dozen strict measures passed around the country by conservative lawmakers in hopes of having a U.S. Supreme Court with new justices overturn years of abortion rights precedents.
South Carolina has about 5,000 abortions a year, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
