July, 13 2022, 05:03pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic: Molly Rivera, molly.rivera@ppsat.org
Planned Parenthood Federation of America: media.office@ppfa.org
Center for Reproductive Rights: center.press@reprorights.org
South Carolina Abortion Providers File New State Court Challenge to 6-Week Abortion Ban
Providers assert ban violates South Carolina Constitutional rights.
WASHINGTON
Today, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, Greenville Women's Clinic, and two physician plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in state court seeking to again block Senate Bill 1, South Carolina's ban on abortion after approximately six weeks of pregnancy. Today's new challenge to the law comes less than a month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion.
Abortion providers have asked a state trial court to block the law on the grounds that it violates South Carolinians' constitutional rights to privacy and equal protection by banning abortion, by providing inadequate protections for patients' health, and by conditioning sexual assault survivors' access to abortion on the disclosure of their personal information to law enforcement.
Shortly after South Carolina lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1 in 2021, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and Greenville Women's Clinic challenged the law on the ground that it was inconsistent with Roe. A federal district court blocked the ban while litigation proceeded, and a federal appeals court upheld the lower court's injunction this past February.
Nearly immediately after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on June 24, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster filed an emergency motion to stay the injunction that had blocked Senate Bill 1. The federal district court granted that request on June 27, allowing the ban to take effect after being blocked for more than a year.
Because of Senate Bill 1, South Carolina providers have been forced to turn away patients who need abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy - before many people even know they are pregnant. While Senate Bill 1 remains in effect, South Carolinians who need care past the earliest stages of pregnancy will be forced to travel out of state, seek abortion outside the health care system, or continue pregnancies against their will.
Plaintiffs are seeking a temporary restraining order that would prevent enforcement of Senate Bill 1 and immediately allow abortion providers in South Carolina to resume abortion services after six weeks of pregnancy. Plaintiffs are also asking the state court to enter an injunction against enforcement while the litigation proceeds.
The plaintiffs in the case are Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and Greenville Women's Clinic - which operate the only clinics offering abortion in South Carolina - and two physicians who provide abortion in South Carolina. They are represented by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the law firm Burnette Shutt & McDaniel.
Statement from Jenny Black, President and CEO, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic:
"Planned Parenthood South Atlantic has long vowed to do everything in our power to protect abortion access for our patients in South Carolina, and today we continue that fight. With today's state court challenge, we are once again seeking to block this harmful law that cruelly denies South Carolinians the power to make their own personal medical decisions. This fight is not new to us, and we know what's at stake: Without court intervention, South Carolinians will continue to suffer in a state with dangerously high rates of maternal mortality and infant mortality, particularly among Black women and babies. We urgently need this court to reject Senate Bill 1 for what it is: a direct assault on our health care, our lives, and fundamental human rights."
Statement from Alexis McGill Johnson, President and CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America:
"Patients in South Carolina and across the country have been thrust into chaos after the Supreme Court's devastating decision to eliminate a federal constitutional right we have relied on for nearly half a century. We are facing a national health care crisis, and we are in the fight of our lives to restore and protect abortion access as lawmakers in states like South Carolina race to further restrict it. The Supreme Court may have abandoned people, but we never will. Planned Parenthood and our partners will keep fighting for our patients state by state, law by law, until every person has the power to control their own bodies, lives, and futures."
Statement from Nancy Northup, President and CEO, Center for Reproductive Rights:
"The fallout of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has been swift and catastrophic. There has been mayhem at an unimaginable scale as people have struggled to find the essential health care that they need. With today's lawsuit, we are continuing our fight for South Carolinians' fundamental right to make personal decisions about their own lives, futures, and families. We will not back down. We will continue to work tirelessly across the nation to preserve and protect abortion access."
The Center for Reproductive Rights is a global human rights organization of lawyers and advocates who ensure reproductive rights are protected in law as fundamental human rights for the dignity, equality, health, and well-being of every person.
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'One of the Worst Awards Someone Could Possibly Get': FIFA Blasted for Giving Trump Made-Up 'Peace Prize'
"Winning the FIFA Peace Prize is like winning the Dahmer Culinary Award," said one critic.
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President Donald Trump, whose administration is engaged in a boat-bombing campaign in the Caribbean that human rights organizations and legal experts consider a murder spree, has finally been given a peace prize.
Although Trump tried unsuccessfully this year to get the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award him its prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, he was given something of a consolation gift on Friday when FIFA, the official governing body behind the World Cup, gave him its first-ever FIFA Peace Prize.
After being given the award, Trump called it "truly one of the great honors of my life," and suggested he deserved it for supposedly "saving millions and millions of lives."
A Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health study released last month estimated that Trump's decision to shutter the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year has already caused hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, and a study published this summer by medical journal The Lancet projected that the end of USAID will lead to up to 14 million preventable deaths over the next five years.
According to the New York Times, the announcement awarding Trump the prize was "so hastily arranged that it surprised several of the body’s most senior officials, including board members and vice presidents."
The paper also noted that the prize was just the latest effort by FIFA president Gianni Infantino to shower Trump with flattery whenever possible.
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Human Rights Watch was quick to blast FIFA for giving Trump any sort of peace prize given what it described as the administration's "appalling" human rights record.
Jamil Dakwar, human rights director at the ACLU, also said that Trump was undeserving of the award, and he noted the administration "has aggressively pursued a systematic anti-human rights campaign to target, detain, and disappear immigrants in communities across the US—including the deployment of the National Guard in cities where the World Cup will take place."
Dakwar also called on FIFA "to honor its human rights commitments, not capitulate to Trump’s authoritarianism."
Daniel Noroña, Americas advocacy director for Amnesty International USA, also warned FIFA that many soccer fans could end up being targeted by federal immigration officials for trying to attend World Cup games in US cities next year.
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Anti-war group CodePink protested against Trump's award of the FIFA prize in Washington, DC, and argued that the president is "escalating war on Venezuela, protecting Israel’s continued attacks on Palestine, and terrorizing our communities with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the National Guard," and thus should not receive any honors for his supposed peacemaking efforts.
Other critics, however, argued that FIFA was the perfect organization to give the president a made-up peace prize given its long history of corruption and bribery scandals.
@EiFSoccer, an account on X primarily dedicated to soccer news, said that "the FIFA Peace Prize is unironically one of the worst awards someone could possibly get," given that it was being handed out by "one of the most corrupt sporting institutions of all time."
"Winning the FIFA Peace Prize is like winning the Dahmer Culinary Award," joked journalist Mark Jacob on Bluesky.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders, ranking member of the top US Senate committee on public health, demanded on Friday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explain to lawmakers why experts he convened had scrapped a policy that one academic recently called "one of the most significant public health achievements in US child health over the past several decades."
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), said Sanders, "in strong disagreement with the medical and scientific community, voted to end a decades-long recommendation that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine. This vaccine saves lives."
Since 1991, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) adopted a policy of recommending the hepatitis B vaccine for all newborn babies in the US, the number of children who test positive for the disease has plummeted by 99%, from nearly 20,000 annually to the single or low-double digits.
On Friday, ACIP—whose 17 previous members were all fired and replaced by Kennedy—voted to potentially erase that progress, which, as Kelly Gebo, dean of the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, said this week, has "prevented tens of thousands of deaths, and remains a safe, effective, and essential measure."
The panel voted 8-3 that women who test negative for hepatitis B should work with their healthcare provider to decide "when and if" their children will be vaccinated against the virus, which causes an infection of the liver and can be transmitted through blood or other bodily fluids. The disease can cause a chronic infection and eventually lead to cirrhosis, liver failure, or liver cancer.
Under the new guidance, parents will be advised to “consider vaccine benefits, vaccine risks, and infection risks” and administer the shot at two months of age at the earliest.
At Stat News, Helen Branswell noted that while the revised policy, as stated, is only a recommendation in cases of a pregnant person who is at low risk for hepatitis B, the across-the-board recommendation helped ensure babies would not slip "through the safety net meant to protect them against infection at birth."
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The ACIP members who voted to change the policy repeated claims made by Kennedy throughout the debate—that babies in general are at low risk and that hepatitis largely affects sex workers, drug users, and people from countries with high hepatitis B rates.
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James Campbell, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ infectious diseases committee, told Stat News about a 15-year-old girl he cared for who had not been vaccinated against hepatitis B in infancy because she was not believed to be at risk. She developed a chronic infection and ultimately died after two failed liver transplants.
“This is a very dangerous decision. It will certainly cause harm,” Campbell told Stat News.
Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen added that the vote is a "tragedy in the making."
In Massachusetts, Democratic Gov. Maura Healey indicated she plans to take action to circumvent ACIP's new guidelines and ensure parents are given the data about hepatitis B infection and the benefits and safety of the vaccine that's been recommended for more than three decades.
"RFK, that panel, they are not doing their jobs," Healey told CNN on Thursday night, ahead of the vote. "And in the face of that, as governor, I'm going to do mine, which is to take actions to make available science-based information. To give people real truth, real information, not conspiracy theories or ideologies, and we're going to continue to make available vaccines that people want."
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Cassidy, a physician, grilled Kennedy during his confirmation hearing about his plans for vaccine policies—but ultimately voted in favor of his confirmation.
On Friday, Cassidy said ACIP's new recommendation for the hepatitis B vaccine was "a mistake" and urged CDC Director Jim O'Neill to retain "the current, evidence-based approach."
But Charles Idelson, former communications strategist at National Nurses United, said Cassidy and the other senators who voted to confirm Kennedy to serve as the nation's top health official "own him."
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"Public officials should be deeply concerned by what we found."
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The new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), titled Turning Public Money Into Amazon’s Profits: The Hidden Cost of Ceding Government Procurement to a Monopoly Gatekeeper, is based on purchasing records from nearly 130 cities representing more than 50 million Americans.
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Unlike the fixed pricing that's typical for government contracts, the agreements that Amazon has secured with local governments across the US entail "algorithm-driven pricing" to "covertly raise prices and inflate costs for governments."
"The result is dramatic price variation: One city bought a 12-pack of Sharpie markers for $8.99, while a nearby school district paid $28.63 for the identical pack that same day," ILSR said. "Our data contain thousands of similar examples, with some agencies paying double or even triple what others paid for the same items."
1. Hard to believe, but Amazon has persuaded schools and cities across the country to abandon competitive bidding and fixed price contracts. Instead, they're signing contracts with Amazon that specify dynamic pricing. The result: Paying $37 for 12 pens or $74 for 36 markers. pic.twitter.com/afIIkPucZL
— Stacy Mitchell (@stacyfmitchell) December 5, 2025
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“Public officials should be deeply concerned by what we found,” Stacy Mitchell, co-executive director of ILSR, said in a statement. “Amazon is reshaping public procurement in ways that expose taxpayer dollars to waste and risk. It has persuaded cities and schools to abandon safeguards meant to ensure fair prices and accountability—while driving out independent suppliers, eroding competition, and putting Amazon in a position to dictate terms.”
Having gained sweeping access to local government purchasing processes, Amazon is increasingly inserting itself into state and federal systems. ILSR noted that "Amazon dominates the General Services Administration’s Commercial Platforms Program, a new system for agencies to make purchases below $15,000 that do not require competitive bids."
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ILSR emphasized that Amazon's dominance is by no means inevitable and can, with concerted action, be rolled back.
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To keep their procurement system free of the kinds of tactics Amazon uses to line its pockets with taxpayer money, ILSR urged state and local governments to prohibit so-called "dynamic pricing" in purchasing contracts and to prioritize buying from local businesses.
"By reclaiming control of public procurement, governments can safeguard dollars, strengthen local businesses, and ensure that the goods that sustain our schools and public services are supplied through systems that are transparent, competitive, and democratic," the group said.
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