South Carolina Abortion Clinic Regulations Upheld

By Liz Townsend

The abortion industry's nearly seven-year legal battle to keep from being regulated in South Carolina is finally ending. On April 28, the U.S. Supreme Court refused for the second time to overturn an appeals court decision upholding the law.

"The state regulations are reasonable health and safety measures that do not infringe on anyone's constitutional rights," said Trey Walker, spokesman for pro-life South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster.

The 1995 law was proposed in response to the discovery of gruesome procedures in a North Charleston abortion clinic.

"In 1992, two employees revealed that clinic owner, who is now deceased, used a common kitchen sink disposal to grind up the bodies of aborted babies and flush these human remains into the public water system," Holly Gatling, executive director of South Carolina Citizens for Life, told NRL News.

Since the law did not then apply to first-trimester clinics, state officials could only investigate Floyd for violations of the Hazardous Waste Management Act. After a television network broadcast an exposé of the clinic, women came forward with horror stories from other abortion mills in the state.

"Post-aborted women told of bloody sheets, bloody cots, and dirty bathrooms they encountered in various abortion 'clinics,'" Gatling said. "One young woman testified she saw a dog in the procedure room."

The legislation authorizing development and enforcement of the regulation was signed into law in January 1995 by pro-life Gov. Carroll Campbell. Litigation challenging the Clinic Regulation Act was filed in June 1996, one day before the regulations were to take effect.

Subsequently the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the regulations' constitutionality in August 2000. Six months later, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed that decision to stand, and in September of 2001, the regulations went into effect.

The district court judge who lifted the injunction against the regulations allowed the abortion industry to continue to appeal the privacy-of-records issue.

In September 2002, the appeals court once again upheld the regulations. However, the never-say-die New York-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy brought the case to the Supreme Court for one more try. The Supreme Court's April 28 decision should bring an end to the legal challenges.

The 1995 law extended licensing requirements to clinics performing five or more first-trimester abortions per month. The regulations mainly deal with health and safety requirements, meant to provide "minimum standards of sanitation and medical care for women who tragically decide to abort their babies," Gatling said.

Among the regulations are provisions "concerning sanitation, housekeeping, maintenance, staff qualifications, emergency equipment and procedures to provide emergency care, medical records and reports, laboratory, procedure and recovery rooms, physical plant, quality assurance, infection control, and information on and access to patient follow-up care," according to the appeals court's 2000 decision.

The most contentious parts of the law were those that dealt with patient records. According to the appeals court decision, the law "requires that every abortion clinic maintain and retain for ten years specified categories of information and requires that the documents be treated as confidential."

Pro-abortionists seized on this provision and asserted that it would mean the end to patient privacy in the state. "It will definitely have an impact," Jennet Robinson Alterman, executive director of the Charleston Center for Women, told the Post and Courier. "It's opening up a whole area of patient privacy and confidentiality, and where does it stop?"

Gatling, however, disagrees. "What she says is not true," Gatling said. "Any regulated medical facility - - a nursing home, a hospital or other free-standing clinic - - that comes under investigation must submit patient records to the inspectors who are determining the nature of a health regulation violation."