BY MARY ZIEGLER
AUG 24, 2023

In the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court’s decision undoing abortion rights, anti-abortion groups have focused more than ever on the federal courts, and with good reason. Federal judges are extraordinarily difficult to impeach and hold lifetime appointments, and that insulates them from popular support for abortion access—and opposition to bans.

In theory, state supreme courts should be different. That, at any rate, was the story emerging from Wisconsin after April, when voters overwhelmingly chose a left-leaning candidate who ran on her support for abortion rights. State court judges could effectively be fired by voters who don’t like their decisions on abortion. All of that makes this week’s decision by the South Carolina Supreme Court even more puzzling. The court upheld a six-week abortion ban virtually identical to one struck down earlier this year by the same court. To make the optics even better, the judges to do it were all cisgender men. So how can we make sense of what happened in South Carolina, and what does it teach us about struggles over state supreme courts in the post-Dobbs era?

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/south-carolina-supreme-court-abortion-ban-explanation.html