In a splintered majority, the South Carolina supreme court in January 2023 ruled by a 3-to-2 vote (in Planned Parenthood v. South Carolina, aka Planned Parenthood I) that the heartbeat law that the state enacted in 2021 violated the state constitutional right to privacy. As I explained, Justice John Cannon Few’s separate opinion in support of that ruling was “the most interesting, and in some respects the most puzzling, of the three” opinions issued by the members of the majority, and it even strongly suggested that he would uphold a ban on abortion from conception.

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