US state's court overturns six-week abortion ban

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (AFP): In the first reversal of its kind, South Carolina's Supreme Court overturned a law banning abortion after six weeks on Thursday-inflicting a major setback for abortion opponents in the conservative, southern state.

The decision marked the first time a state top court has struck down such a law since the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in June.

"We hold that our state constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion," the state court ruled.

The US Supreme Court used similar reasoning in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case that protected the right of American women to have an abortion for nearly half a century.

But in a historic turnabout, the highest court ruled in June that the 1973 decision was wrong and returned to the states the right to legislate as they saw fit.

Since then, the country has been riven between states that have enacted restrictions or bans, mainly in the South and the Midwest, and those that have buttressed access to abortion, largely on the coasts.

"This is the first state supreme court decision that supports abortion rights" since the Supreme Court's June ruling, the Guttmacher Institute, which advocates for abortion rights, told AFP.