20 states support South Carolina in abortion lawsuit

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Twenty states are supporting South Carolina's defense of a new abortion law, arguing in an amicus brief that a federal judge was wrong to pause the entire measure instead of just the provision facing a court challenge.

In a filing Tuesday with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the states, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall argued that U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis overstepped her authority when she put the entire abortion law on hold, rather than just the portion being challenged.

The judge's ruling, Marshall wrote, “treads on South Carolina’s sovereign ability to decide for itself the purposes of its legislation” and “aggrandizes the judicial power by treating the court’s injunction of the challenged provision as erasing it entirely so the whole Act collapses.”

The arguments mirror those of South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican who signed the measure into law earlier this year. The state's attorneys wrote in an appellate filing earlier this month that Lewis’ decision to halt the entire measure during litigation “oversteps the bounds of federal judicial power.”

McMaster’s brief asked the appellate judges to lift a lower court’s injunction on the “ South Carolina Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act.”

The law requires doctors to perform ultrasounds to check for a heartbeat in the fetus, which can typically be detected about six weeks after conception. If cardiac activity is detected, the abortion can only be performed if the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, or the mother’s life was in danger.

Planned Parenthood attorneys sued immediately, and the entire law has been blocked from taking effect during the lawsuit.

The states filing in support of South Carolina all “have in place laws...