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Abortions in North Carolina are no longer legal after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, eroding protections in one of the South’s few remaining safe havens for reproductive freedom. U.S. District Judge William Osteen reinstated an unenforced 20-week abortion ban, with exceptions for urgent medical emergencies, after he said the June U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade erased the legal foundation for his 2019 ruling that placed an injunction on the 1973 state law. (Schoenbaum, 8/17)

In 2019, District Judge William Osteen had stopped the law from being enforced and declared the ban unconstitutional based on Supreme Court precedent. His decision was upheld in 2021 by an appeals court. But in his order Wednesday, Osteen wrote that “under Dobbs, there is now no constitutional right to a pre-viability abortion, thus depriving the injunction of any constitutional basis from which to enjoin the challenged North Carolina laws regulating abortion.” (Stracqualursi and Sneed, 8/17)

The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily blocked the state’s near-total abortion ban, which barred patients from terminating a pregnancy at around six weeks, after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. The ban took effect shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. (Shepherd, 8/17)

Meanwhile, the South Carolina Senate had just started taking its first steps toward further abortion restrictions. The Medical Affairs Committee listened to nearly nine hours of invited testimony and public comment Wednesday as they consider language for another abortion bill. On Tuesday, the South Carolina House Judiciary Committee advanced a near-total abortion ban with no exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. (Pollard, 8/17)