Gov. Nikki Haley signed a bill adding South Carolina to the list of states that ban abortions after 19 weeks of pregnancy. These bans on terminating pregnancies at 20 or fewer weeks have now been passed in 17 states. But the ban has been struck down by courts in three other states as unconstitutional, so they are only enforced in 13 of them until South Carolina’s law goes into effect.
Similar to laws in other states, the South Carolina law is called the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Such bans are one more tactic of forced-birthers on the road to banning all legal abortions. The law states that "substantial medical evidence" indicates that fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks gestation. Neurologists and other members of the medical community dispute that claim:
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A 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that "fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester. Although ultrasound monitoring can show intrauterine fetal movement, no studies since 2005 demonstrate fetal recognition of pain," a statement from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said (PDF).
The third trimester begins at 28 weeks.
Like all but one of the other state 20-week bans, South Carolina’s includes no exceptions for rape or incest. The only exceptions are when the life of the mother is at risk and when fetal anomalies mean no chance of survival outside the womb. More than half the 20-week state bans have no exception for fetal anomalies whatsoever. South Carolina’s ban also includes an inadequate health exception for the mother. Physicians who violate the law can be punished with a $10,000 fine and up to three years in prison.
Abortions at 20 weeks and afterward are rare. An average of just 28 women a year undergo such abortions in South Carolina. Nationwide, about 1.3 to 1.5 percent of abortions take place at 20 weeks or later. NARAL, the national abortion rights advocacy organization explains why these late-term abortions are necessary:
A number of fetal and genetic anomalies cannot be identified until later in pregnancy, and some women find themselves facing pregnancies gone terribly wrong. Health conditions that threaten the woman’s life or health can develop at any point during a pregnancy. And a large share of women seeking abortions late in the second trimester do so because they face dramatically changed life circumstances or were unable to obtain an earlier abortion—a situation that’s increasingly common in states where laws are making abortion more expensive, more time-consuming, and more geographically inaccessible.
At some point (who knows when), these 20-week laws will get a hearing at the Supreme Court. The outcome of that could very well depend on who fills the seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.