10 South Carolinians face pregnancy-related charges after Dobbs ruling

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South Carolina is one of the handful of states that has charged women with pregnancy-related crimes in the year after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Dobbs decision, the South Carolina Daily Gazette website reported.

Prepared by Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit group that advocates for women’s rights, including abortion, the report says that 10 women in South Carolina were prosecuted from June 24, 2022, when the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling was announced, to June 23, 2023. The ruling, which said states had the authority to set law on access to abortion, overturned the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which sharply limited government authority over abortion access.

By far, Alabama had most of the prosecutions, 104, followed by Oklahoma with 68. Ohio had seven, and Mississippi and Texas had six each, the report says. Cases also were documented in California, Idaho, Kentucky, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wyoming.

However, almost none of the prosecutions were brought under state abortion laws. Rather, the women charged faced counts such as child neglect or endangerment, where the definition of “child” was interpreted to include a fetus.

South Carolina has had a six-week abortion ban since August 2023; however, it makes clear that a woman cannot be prosecuted for undergoing the procedure.

“All six of the states that accounted for most of the cases cited in the study have fetal personhood language baked into their laws,” the Daily Gazette reported. “Seventeen states have laws with broad fetal personhood language that could apply to all criminal laws, according to an analysis by Pregnancy Justice.”

South Carolina’s six-week abortion ban law defines pregnancy as “having a living unborn child within her body.”