South Carolina Supreme Court decides heartbeat definition allows...

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : Planned Parenthood said the words after the "or" mean the ban should only start after the major parts of the heart come together and "repetitive rhythmic contraction" begins, which is often around nine weeks.
46% : And the Supreme Court pointed out Planned Parenthood used the phrase "six-week ban" more than 300 times in previous filings as South Carolina's 2021 ban at cardiac activity was overturned in a 3-2 decision in 2023 and then reinstated months later after the General Assembly tweaked the law and the court's only woman who overturned the ban had to retire because of her age.
45% : "We could find not one instance during the entire 2023 legislative session in which anyone connected in any way to the General Assembly framed the Act as banning abortion after approximately nine weeks," Associate Justice John Few wrote in the court's opinion.
41% : The ruling upholding the six-week ban mentioned the imprecision which led Planned Parenthood to sue again over the definitions.
38% : The justices unanimously ruled that while the medical language in the 2023 law was vague, supporters and opponents of the law all seemed to think it banned abortions after six weeks until Planned Parenthood lost its challenge to the entire law two years ago.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.