State Supreme Court makes South Carolina great again, when men controlled their women
An all-male South Carolina Supreme Court helped an overwhelmingly-male General Assembly make the Palmetto State Great Again, when men treated their women however they liked.
There’s little reason to take seriously a word of what the nation’s only all-male Supreme Court wrote in its ruling upholding a barbaric six-week abortion ban. That ruling proves laws are arbitrary, based on the whims and wants of those with power. In South Carolina, that largely means conservative white men convinced they are doing God’s work from a position granted them by other conservative white men.
Vicky Ringer, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, summed it up well in a tweet: “When the same law is unconstitutional six months ago and is now constitutional, you have yourself a shamefully politicized, all-male state Supreme Court. Women no longer have privacy in SC. That constitutional protection doesn’t apply to us today.”
The men on the court want us to pretend a few tweaks – and maybe a sprinkling of fairy dust and drops of blood from the entrails of a South Carolina-raised cow – to a law that had just been deemed unconstitutional makes it acceptable. It’s a law written by the same people with the same intent they initially had. We all know it. And we all knew it would not matter the moment the lone woman on the court, the Honorable Kaye Hearn, had to relinquish her seat because of an age-based retirement.
Ignore the pious talk and empty platitudes about saving babies. It’s not about “pro-life” even as self-professed Christ-following men in the General Assembly swear it is, given the bevy of anti-life policies those same men conjure up, support and implement, making the Palmetto State one of the worst places in the U.S. to be a kid or pregnant woman. Look no further than State Rep. Neal Collins who made headlines months ago. He regretted voting in favor of an abortion law after being told the story of a 19-year-old woman who had a 50 percent of losing her uterus and “a 10-percent chance that she will develop sepsis and herself die” because of such laws – before once again voting for such a law.
The exceptions for rape and the life of the mother will rarely be granted – by design. The lawmakers and justices don’t give a darn about women dying or nearly dying or enduring excruciating pain before doctors feel comfortable treating them for fear of breaching similar laws in other states. They wanted a more draconian law, even, including one that didn’t allow exceptions for rape and incest, or another subjecting women who have abortions to the death penalty.
It’s not about the constitution, which clearly says each South Carolinian has a right to privacy, because this ruling mean that alleged constitutional right does not apply to pregnant women.
The ruling comes at a useful time, the start of a new school year. It should be presented as evidence at the Charleston School of Law and the University of South Carolina School of Law that motivated reasoning – not fealty to a good-faith constitutional reading – is the foundation of South Carolina law.
In South Carolina, might has long made right, though that hasn’t always been the case. When free black men and those recently-freed from enslavement made up the majority of the South Carolina General Assembly during Reconstruction, they helped write a state constitution designed to bring equality to all. Mobs of white men went on a lynching spree and terror campaign until they had violently retaken power and put us on the course where we find ourselves today. Maybe that’s why the General Assembly has also been busy passing laws making it harder for teachers in this state to teach the truth about South Carolina’s history, to convince young people that this is how things must always be. Easier to blind them to what’s happening, that an all-male Supreme Court and overwhelmingly-male Supreme Court are dragging South Carolina kicking and screaming out of the 21st century back towards the 19th.
This story was originally published August 27, 2023 at 5:00 AM.