Greenville woman arrested after allegedly taking abortion pill to end 2021 pregnancy
A 33-year-old Greenville woman was arrested this week after she allegedly self-administered an abortion pill to terminate a pregnancy in 2021.
In October 2021, the woman was taken to St. Francis Hospital due to labor contractions and told medical professionals that she had taken the pill to terminate the pregnancy, the incident report said.
She later gave birth to a stillborn fetus of 25 weeks and 4 days.
The current state law bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and does not allow abortions without the presence of a physician or a certified hospital set up during the second trimester.
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Investigators, as per the incident report, concluded their investigation and obtained their warrant a year later on Sept. 20, 2022, after determining that the woman had self-administered the pill illegally.
Greenville Police Department Spokesperson Johnathan Bragg said the hospital notified the police about the incident. Bragg also said that the woman was released from jail after she posted a $2,500 surety bond.
Around the time the woman was arrested, the South Carolina Legislature was grappling with a six-week "fetal heartbeat" abortion ban. The law was blocked by a federal court in 2021 but went into effect once the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022.
The two-year legal battle ended earlier this year when the SC Supreme Court permanently blocked the six-week ban in Jan. 5, 2023, after ruling that the bill violated privacy rights enshrined in the state constitution. But the abortion debate is far from over as lawmakers renewed efforts to pass recalibrated versions of abortion bans this session.
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Only a day after the state Supreme Court declined to rehear the 2021 fetal heartbeat bill and Attorney General Alan Wilson said the fate of abortions in the state was in the "legislature's hands," the Senate passed a new six-week ban. The Senate ban repeals a 1974 clause that criminalized a woman for getting an abortion and adds guardrails around contraception access.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said he hoped this bill would survive future litigation. The timing of the debate had greater scrutiny as it was on the same day when the legislature elected Judge Gary Hill to replace Justice Kaye Hearn, the sole woman on the SC Supreme Court bench.
Hearn, who authored the majority opinion quashing the 2021 six-week abortion ban, retired because state law mandates term limits on judgeships.
Nevertheless, it appears that the legislature may be in for another deadlock. The House passed its version of the bill that would ban all abortions after conception.
Both chambers' bills have exceptions for rape and incest and place the burden of criminalization on physicians, but the Senate has maintained that it does not have the votes to ban abortions for anything less than six weeks.
Devyani Chhetri covers the South Carolina State House and is a watchdog SC government reporter. You can reach her at dchhetri@gannett.com or @ChhetriDevyani.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Greenville woman arrested for birthing fetus after abortion pill
