South Carolina woman charged with unlawful abortion at nearly 26 weeks
By Peyton Furtado
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GREENVILLE, South Carolina (WYFF) — A Greenville woman has been arrested and charged after allegedly terminating her pregnancy at 25 1/2 weeks. The current legal limit in South Carolina is 20 weeks.
Greenville police said the coroner’s office alerted them back in 2021, when a 33-year-old woman birthed a stillborn baby at almost 26 weeks. She was brought to St. Francis Hospital with labor pains and told staff there she had taken abortion medication on her own, officials say.
A representative from the Greenville police said this is the first person they’ve ever charged with unlawful abortion.
According to SLED, only one person was charged with self-managing an abortion in South Carolina between 2019 and 2021.
With the future of abortion laws in South Carolina uncertain, Furman Professor of Philosophy and South Carolina Medical Ethics Board Member Carmela Epright said the legal environment could put patients and doctors in a bad position.
“If a patient accesses a pill like that, what do you do to treat them,” she asked. “Are you going to save mom? Are you going to save the baby? And I think physicians are in a really difficult situation and probably contacting their risk managers to ask ‘what am I supposed to do?’ And I’m not sure those answers are clear. It’s going to be dangerous for babies, it’s going to be dangerous for moms, it’s going to be dangerous for doctors.”
The woman charged posted a $2,500 bond after she was arrested. The maximum penalty for this charge is two years in prison and a $1,000 fine. The charge is a misdemeanor.
We reached out to the woman charged. She did not want to speak on this matter. WYFF News 4 has decided not to publish her name or mugshot.
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