January 2017 – A rule originally included in a draft of updated abortion regulations dated September 23, 2016, proposed by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, would have required a husband’s signed consent before his wife could get an abortion. Current state law requires a husband’s consent only in the third trimester.
The DHEC withdrew the rule after Planned Parenthood aggressively condemned the notion that husbands have any rights in an abortion decision. The DHEC planned a public hearing on the issue in December.
Planned Parenthood first established a case against fathers’ involvement in 1992 when, in Planned Parenthood v Casey, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Pennsylvania law requiring spousal notification of an abortion.
