A divided South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled the state’s six-week abortion ban unconstitutional under a privacy protection provision of the South Carolina constitution. Article I, § 10 of that document bars “unreasonable invasions of privacy.” The court held that privacy protection extended to an individual’s medical decisions and rejected the state’s argument that the provision only covered data privacy. South Carolina joins the high courts of Alaska, Florida, Minnesota, Montana, and Tennessee in holding that constitutional privacy rights protect a woman’s procreative choices (Tennessee amended its constitution to exclude abortion rights from privacy protections in 2014). While recognizing that the state may place reasonable limitations on abortion, the fetal heartbeat statute’s six-week bar did not “afford a woman sufficient time to determine she is pregnant and to take reasonable steps to terminate the pregnancy.”
Ten states have similar privacy protections in their constitutions. The Texas Constitution protects people “in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from all unreasonable seizures or searches,” but does not include the broader protection of those states. You can read the Court’s opinion below.
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