Suit was filed last week in a South Carolina federal district court by five physicians who contend that South Carolina's abortion ban violates their religious and conscientious beliefs in violation of the First Amendment's free exercise clause. The complaint (full text) in Bingham v. Wilson, (D SC, filed 1/8/2025), alleges in part:
137. Plaintiffs hold sincere religious and conscientious beliefs that they have unwavering duties to respect the dignity of every person, help people in critical need, and place others before themselves. For Plaintiffs, that includes using their medical training to honor a patient’s request to end a pregnancy that threatens to deeply harm her.
The complaint focuses on the narrow exceptions from the abortion ban in South Carolina law for health of the mother, rape or incest, and fatal fetal anomaly and contends:
168. It is neither religiously neutral nor generally applicable for South Carolina to allow abortion under the Abortion Ban’s secular Exceptions while criminalizing abortion when Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs compel it in substantially similar circumstances.
169. In sum, South Carolina has criminalized religious conduct while allowing secular conduct that undermines its purported state interest in similar ways. In doing so, the State has made a value judgment that secular motivations for abortion care are important enough to overcome this interest, but that religious motivations are not. South Carolina has thus singled out religious conduct for unfavorable treatment.
Plaintiffs also allege that the health and fetal anomaly exceptions in the law are unconstitutionally vague.
Washington Examiner reports on the lawsuit. [Thanks to Thomas Rutledge for the lead.]
