CHARLESTON, S.C. — A federal judge is weighing whether the exceptions written into the South Carolina abortion ban are clear enough for doctors to follow, as a three-day bench trial over the 2023 law wraps up Friday.
The lawsuit, brought by obstetrician-gynecologists and filed in January 2025, does not attack the ban as a whole. It targets two carve-outs: one for a serious risk to the health of the mother and one for a fatal fetal anomaly. The doctors argue that wording is so unclear it violates the Constitution.
Under the law and later state Supreme Court rulings, abortion is illegal roughly six weeks into a pregnancy, with exceptions for rape or incest, a threat to the mother, or a fetus unlikely to survive birth. An illegal abortion is a felony that can bring as much as two years behind bars, a $10,000 fine and a lost medical license. So far, prosecutors have charged no doctor under the law.
Doctors who testified for the plaintiffs described conditions such as high blood pressure, sickle cell disease, lupus and breast cancer that can turn dangerous in pregnancy but are often survivable, leaving them unsure whether an abortion would be legal. One said she has sent patients to other states rather than risk a felony charge. They also said the line between a fatal anomaly and a survivable one is not something medicine can always draw.
Attorneys for the state, whose defendants include Attorney General Alan Wilson and the solicitors, say the language can be readily understood. An OB-GYN from Greenwood testifying for the state said the law lists 11 qualifying conditions, among them ectopic pregnancy and severe preeclampsia, and that the list signals the level of severity lawmakers meant.
Prosecutors from two solicitor offices testified that a conviction would require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a doctor did not use reasonable medical judgment, a standard they said could make cases hard to bring.
State data shows only 51 abortions were performed after six weeks last year under the exceptions. U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel, who earlier threw out a religious freedom claim in the case, is not expected to rule right away.
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