Abortion

Eugene Volokh | 5.7.2025 3:23 PM

From Bingham v. Wilson, decided today by Judge Richard Gergel (D.S.C.):

In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), the South Carolina Legislature enacted a ban on abortions after nine weeks of pregnancy. The Act [criminalizes] "perform[ing] or induc[ing] an abortion on a pregnant woman with the specific intent of causing or abetting an abortion" if an embryonic or "fetal heartbeat" has been detected on an ultrasound…. The Act contains three exceptions where abortions may be performed after nine weeks of pregnancy:

"As a matter of due process, a criminal statute that 'fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute' … or is so indefinite that 'it encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions,' … is void for vagueness." …

Plaintiffs contend that "two features of the Health Exception render South Carolina's Abortion Ban unconstitutionally vague: 1) 'serious risk' is so standardless that it is very difficult to determine how likely an impairment must be to qualify, and 2) 'substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function' has no inherent meaning in medicine, leaving Plaintiffs with inadequate notice of which dangerous health conditions the Exception covers." With regards to the Fatal Fetal Anomaly Exception, Plaintiffs complain........

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