COLUMBIA, S.C. — Since South Carolina passed its fetal heartbeat abortion ban in 2021, the issue has been in the public spotlight either through court challenges or legislative attempts to strengthen its provisions. That will not change in 2025, as two Supreme Courts and the General Assembly all have abortion-related items on their agendas.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Wednesday it will take up Kerr vs. Planned Parenthood, a case involving South Carolina’s cutting off Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood, specifically whether Medicaid patients can sue for their own qualified providers. South Carolina tried to cut off funding because the organization provided abortions.

The S.C. Supreme Court will once again take up the state’s “fetal heartbeat” law, which bans abortion at six weeks. Previous challenges argued the constitutionality of the law, but this time, the court will be looking at the law’s language and whether it means nine weeks or six weeks.

Multiple bills have been prefiled in the General Assembly by some of its most powerful members for the upcoming 2025-26 session. Some lawmakers are pushing for a complete abortion ban, with the support of more than a dozen Republicans, while others are attempting to give women more access to the procedure.

Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood isn’t abortions

In 2018, the state cut funding from Planned Parenthood through an executive order by Gov. Henry McMaster, but lower courts blocked it. Planned Parenthood is a national nonprofit that provides reproductive health care, abortions and other women’s heath services.

McMaster, a Republican, ordered state officials to deny Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, saying that “payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life.”

A patient, who wanted contraception, and the organization sued. A federal trial judge blocked the instruction because it was against Medicaid’s provision offering a free choice of provider and it has been in various courts since. In March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled the lawsuit was proper, but its decision was not about the funding of abortions.

Last year, the Supreme Court decided that nursing home residents could sue their state-owned health care facility over alleged violations of civil rights, which asserted the right for Medicaid users to “freely choose their health care provider.”

The state’s attorneys, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian group, appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which previously declined twice to take up the issue.

“Taxpayer dollars should never fund abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. In 2018, I issued an executive order to end this practice in South Carolina. I’m confident the U.S. Supreme Court will agree with me that states shouldn’t be forced to subsidize abortions,” McMaster tweeted Wednesday.

“This case is politics at its worst: Anti-abortion politicians using their power to target Planned Parenthood and block people who use Medicaid as their primary form of insurance from getting essential health care like cancer screenings and birth control,” Jenny Black, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said in a statement Wednesday.

In September, Vicki Ringer, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic director of public affairs, said the nonprofit doesn’t receive any family planning money. The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services says family planning services “prevent or delay pregnancies and do not include abortion or abortion-related services,” according to Jeff Leieritz, director of strategic communications for the health department.

Ringer said the only money that could be considered coming from the state would be Medicaid reimbursements or through the state health plan, and would pay for services such as annual pap-smears to vasectomies or contraceptive refills, but they cannot be abortion services, Ringer said.

Leieritz said providers who perform abortion services outside of the three exceptions laid out in federal and state law will not receive Medicaid funds. “In support of this principle, and in response to Governor McMaster’s Executive Order 2018-21, SCDHHS sent a letter terminating Planned Parenthood South Atlantic from the state’s Medicaid program effective July 13, 2018,” Leieritz wrote.

Planned Parenthood has two active clinics in South Carolina.

SC Supreme Court to decide 6 vs. 9 weeks

The S.C. Supreme Court will also be taking up the state’s abortion ban again in February, where they will be looking at whether the six-week ban should be nine weeks. It will be the third time that the fetal heartbeat law bill is challenged in the state’s supreme court. The arguments are set for February 12, when justices will decide when the law dictates abortions become illegal, surrounding the “cardiac activity, or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart, within the gestational sac.”

In May, a Richland County Judge denied a preliminary injunction and kept the state’s fetal heartbeat abortion ban at six weeks, citing the legislative intent of the law.

“This court holds that it is clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that the General Assembly intended, and the public understood, that the time frame of the act would begin around the six-week mark,” Judge Daniel Coble wrote in a decision issued in May.

Planned Parenthood argues that the law should be enforced at the nine-week mark, when the heart is fully formed.

“The definition of ‘fetal heartbeat’ is not clear and unambiguous and does not convey a definite meaning on its face,” Coble wrote. “Therefore, this Court must look to the intent of the General Assembly in determining, if possible, what it envisioned.”

Some lawmakers aren’t content with 6 weeks. They want a full ban.

On the state level, some lawmakers aren’t done with the issue after successfully passing the six-week ban. There are multiple pieces of legislation prefiled that pertain to abortion for the upcoming 2025-2026 legislative session.

House leaders have indicated that abortion legislation would need to start in the Senate. House Majority Leader Davey Hiott said “let’s allow them to send it to us and we’ll take a look at it, because we’ve always been the one that started it, and it won’t sit over here if they send it to us,” regarding abortion legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, however, said it is not a top priority for them, and wouldn’t say if and when they will jump into an abortion debate, but a conversation took place in the all-male Republican caucus.

Rep. Leon Stavrinkakis, D-Charleston, prefiled a bill that would make a state constitutional amendment to “make and carry out ones reproductive decisions.” This would mean that the decision for an abortion ban would go before South Carolina voters.

Another bill sponsored by Rep. John McCravy, R-Greenwood, and more than a dozen other House members including Speaker of the House Murrell Smith and House Majority Leader Davey Hiott, would enact a full abortion ban with exceptions for some medical emergencies. This would mean no abortion under any circumstance would be allowed in South Carolina, unless it was to save the life of the mother. If passed, anyone who received or provided an abortion could be charged with a felony.

State Rep. Melissa Oremus, R-Aiken, prefiled a bill that would attach written statements to mifepristone, the drug used in a two-pill sequence for ending pregnancies, where information about the drug and abortions would be on the prescription form and or package that the pill comes in.

Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, prefiled legislation that enhances protection for women seeking abortion, proposing a bill labeled “Reproductive rights.” The bill’s language asserts that abortions can be performed up until the viability of her fetus, but also goes into protecting women from legal action if they experience a miscarriage; requiring training by medical schools in S.C. on miscarriages and “spontaneous abortion”; and ensuring a woman is not given false information related to abortion, among other matters in the bill.

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