SC woman charged after allegedly consuming abortion pills to end pregnancy
A Greenville woman was arrested earlier this week and charged with performing or soliciting an abortion.
In October 2021, the then-33-year-old woman sought medical help at St. Francis Hospital after having labor pains, according to a Greenville Police Department incident report. A warrant for her arrest was signed in 2022, Greenville Police Sgt. Johnathan Brown said.
The incident report says the woman told medical personnel she had taken abortion pills to end a pregnancy. State law prohibits self-medication to abort a pregnancy. The fetus was stillborn and was determined to be 25 weeks and four days, according to the incident report.
“It was determined that the accused obtained and self-medicated. Consumed the abortion pills illegally,” the incident report said.
The State newspaper is not identifying the woman at this time because the charges are related to a personal medical procedure.
The Greenville County Coroner’s Office reported the incident to Greenville Police.
Bragg said the woman posted a $2,500 surety bond and was released.
Currently, South Carolina bans abortions at about 20 weeks of pregnancy. The state’s previous six-week “fetal heartbeat” law — banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat was detected, typically around six weeks — was struck down in January by the S.C. Supreme court after it ruled 3-2 the law violated the state’s right to privacy.
Despite the ruling, Republican lawmakers in the State House have pushed forward abortion restrictions this year.
The Senate passed a new six-week bill specifically designed to respond to the state Supreme Court’s decision. The House passed a bill that would ban abortions from the point of conception.
Both bills have exceptions for rape, incest, the life and health of the mother and a fatal fetal anomaly.
Whether the two chambers can come together on an agreement remains to be seen. Republicans in both chambers were unable to agree on further restrictions last fall in a special session when they tackled the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision striking down Roe v. Wade in June.
The new legislation moved after lawmakers elected Judge Gary Hill to replaced Justice Kaye Hearn, the only woman on the state’s high court, who retired from the bench after reaching the state-mandated retirement age of 72. With Hill’s election, the state Supreme Court is now all male for the first time in 35 years.
The arrest of the Greenville woman brought chills to abortion rights proponents.
“Pregnancy outcomes shouldn’t be criminalized,” said Ashley Lidow, the director for policy and government relations for the Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network. “It’s very unfortunate that this is something that’s occurring in our state, and it’s something that state lawmakers should be looking at in the immediate future, because this is going to impact that person’s life right now in real time, and (lawmakers) can take steps to ensure that somebody who is experiencing a pregnancy outcome, whatever direction it may be going, isn’t facing handcuffs over their health care.”
Even though state law prohibits women from self-medicating to have an abortion, recent efforts to restrict abortions in the state have targeted health care providers for performing the procedure.
“So our lawmakers in recent history have claimed that they don’t want to charge women, but we have a sleeper statute in our code that makes it a misdemeanor to self-manage an abortion, so they potentially could be charged under that, and we’ve been actively trying to remove that,” Lidow added.
