Judge allows SC Gov. McMaster, House Speaker Lucas to intervene in abortion law case

Over the objections of abortion rights lawyers, a federal judge on Tuesday allowed SC Gov. Henry McMaster and House Speaker Jay Lucas to enter an ongoing lawsuit contesting the state’s new anti-abortion fetal heartbeat law.

“It is the judgment of the Court Gov. McMaster’s motion to intervene... is granted and Speaker Lucas’s motion to intervene ... is granted,” wrote U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis in an 8-page order filed late Tuesday afternoon.

The new law has been blocked from taking effect since Feb. 19, when Judge Lewis issued a temporary restraining order after Planned Parenthood lawyers filed their lawsuit. A renewal of that restraining order expires on March 19. Judge Lewis could issue a more permanent injunction before or after that.

The intervention of two of the state’s highest-profile Republican politicians, who both played major roles in the passage and enactment of South Carolina’s new anti-abortion law, means that they will be full-fledged parties to the lawsuit and have rights to file and respond to motions, conduct discovery, make appeals and the like.

The lawsuit by Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the Greenville Women’s Clinic and Dr. Terry Buffkin was filed Feb. 18, the same day that Gov. McMaster signed the measure into law.

Initial defendants in the case are State Attorney General Alan Wilson, members of the S.C. Board of Medical Examiners and Edward Simmer, director of the S.C. Board of Health and Environmental Control, which licenses abortion clinics.

South Carolina’s new anti-abortion measure is one of the nation’s strictest, banning nearly all abortions after an embryo’s heartbeat can be detected, or as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Critics contend many women don’t even know they are pregnant then.

Planned Parenthood attorneys assert the new law is unconstitutional and say it conflicts with nearly 50 years of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that allow women to terminate a pregnancy up to about the 24th week of pregnancy. Almost all abortions performed in South Carolina in the state take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. In 2019, for example, 99.4% of abortions performed in the state were within that time frame, according to DHEC.

South Carolina’s new law would only allow abortions up to about six to eight weeks of pregnancy.

Abortion rights attorneys had opposed the intervention of Lucas and McMaster, saying that the state’s interests are already well represented by Attorney General Wilson and that the governor’s and the speaker’s participation “as parties appears to serve no end but their own political self-interest.”

Although Judge Lewis concluded that Attorney General Wilson was ably representing the interest of the governor and the speaker, she said she was granting their requests to intervene because their requests were timely and would not delay proceedings. Most importantly, the judge wrote, the governor and the speaker have a vital interest in the key question raised Planned Parenthood: the constitutionality of the new anti-abortion law.