About three months into conceiving their second child last fall, the young South Carolina couple was given an earth-shattering prognosis. And two grim choices.
Based on multiple genetic tests and an ultrasound that indicated the baby was not growing normally, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist suspected triploidy, a deadly genetic disorder in which chromosomes are tripled rather than doubled. The couple could wait for their daughter to die in utero or within minutes or hours of being born. Or they could terminate.
But because of a nascent law in South Carolina — which bans pregnancy termination if cardiac activity is detectable on an ultrasound — the couple now had to prove their baby’s condition was fatal in order to qualify for an abortion under the state’s limited exceptions.
The mom, who asked to withhold her name to protect her family’s privacy, said cardiac activity was still audible but the pregnancy was so underdeveloped, the medical team could not extract a sample from the placenta. And when they began debating whether to pull down her uterus, the mom said she and her husband decided to leave the state. Their doctor connected them with a hospital in Virginia, where abortion is legal.
“I feel discouraged from ever trying to do this again,” said the mom, who told States Newsroom that she and her husband wanted the abortion so she could start grieving her lost child and ensure her own health. “I love being a mom. I want kids. I have a beautiful child. But if something like this ever happens to me again, it’s not going to be better, but it could be a lot worse in this new political climate.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
SUBSCRIBE
For some OB-GYNs in South Carolina, denying care to pregnant patients has become a devastating new part of their job. In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit with national implications, a group of OB-GYNs is asking a federal court to overturn the state’s abortion ban on the basis that it does not allow “physicians to provide abortion care mandated by their religious beliefs.”
“Most people go into medicine to provide care and feel very strongly about that, particularly in the field that they have expertise. But as human beings, we also have a conscience and religious beliefs that sustain and nurture what we do in our professional realm,” said Dr. Natalie Dawn Bingham, an OB-GYN who practices in Columbia and who serves as an elder at First Presbyterian Church in Spartanburg.
She is the lead plaintiff among five doctors who say the state abortion law’s exceptions violate the First Amendment’s due process clause for being too vague and violate the free exercise clause. Passed in 2023, the state’s so-called “fetal heartbeat” law effectively bans abortion around six weeks’ gestation, before many women first learn they are pregnant. (In a separate state lawsuit, Planned Parenthood argues the law should actually allow abortions through the ninth week.)
Like similar legislation enacted in Florida, Georgia and Iowa, South Carolina’s law has exceptions for fatal fetal illnesses and if the pregnant person is in danger of death or an “irreversible physical impairment.”
Bingham, who has been practicing in the state since 2005, said these exceptions are poorly defined and difficult to qualify for, sparking debates about whether a fetus destined to die within hours or days of birth still constitutes as having a fatal condition, or whether a maternal diagnosis of cancer or severe hypertension would qualify as a medical emergency. She said the state has turned what were previously medical questions into legal ones, the possible consequences of which include losing one’s medical license, a $10,000 fine, and two years in prison.
To comply with the law, doctors have to report abortions provided under the exceptions and maintain related records for seven years, and they have to provide detailed medical documentation that supports the diagnosis of a fatal fetal anomaly. According to the lawsuit, some of the hospitals where plaintiffs work require consensus from multiple physicians, and many worry their judgment could be later second-guessed by prosecutors or medical board members.
“How can you say that you could access these exceptions based on reasonable medical judgment when you already are not respecting the medical judgment of the people making these decisions?” said Bingham, who like the other OB-GYN plaintiffs in the case works with high-risk patients. “Down the line, at any point in time, some arbitrary prosecutor could call that into question, who doesn’t have any medical training.”
In cases of rape or incest, abortion is legal up to 12 weeks’ gestation. The law requires that a doctor tell the patient that a police report must be filed within 24 hours of the abortion. “In a rare instance in which a rape survivor was willing to report the rape to law enforcement, the police insisted on coming to her home to complete the report,” the complaint reads. “The experience was so degrading that the patient permanently left South Carolina.”
The lawsuit also notes that the 12-week limit further precludes rape and incest survivors from accessing abortion under these exemptions because many survivors are children or teenagers and often don’t discover they are pregnant until later. From the law’s effective date in August 2023 through December 2023, fewer than five abortions were provided under the rape or incest exception, according to state health data.
Bingham said the only pediatric and adolescent OB-GYN moved to Virginia over legal issues.
An emerging legal strategy
During his recent confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, Health and Human Services secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. agreed when asked by U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, if he supported conscience protections for anti-abortion health professionals.
“Forcing somebody to participate in a medical procedure as a provider that they believe is murder does not make any sense to me,” Kennedy replied.
Despite implications to the contrary, there are several federal laws that allow providers to opt out of abortion, including the Weldon Amendment, named after Dave Weldon, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In recent years, anti-abortion groups have successfully used religious freedom laws as arguments against having to provide or refer for contraception. In 2014 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., that the birth control coverage mandate in the Affordable Care Act violated the religious rights of for-profit corporate owners.
Filed last month, Bingham v. Wilson is one of the first federal cases to look at doctors’ religious and conscience rights from an abortion-rights perspective.
At a conference of OB-GYNs about 18 months ago, Bingham said she and other physicians began discussing their legal options.
“If there is a right to refuse care, there certainly seems to be the corollary where we have a right to provide care, particularly based on our conscience, and then the tenets of each of our own religions, and based on years of training and dedication,” Bingham said, noting that South Carolina has a conscience law that allows health providers to refuse care.
Her co-plaintiffs include complex family planning specialist and Incarnation Lutheran Church member Dr. Patricia Seal, complex family planning specialist Dr. Jessica Tarleton of Christian and Jewish faith, OB-GYN Dr. Katee Wyant, and an anonymous complex family planning specialist known as Jane Doe. They are represented by the Lawyering Project and the Law Office of Bill Nettles.
“For these five physicians it’s almost every day that they are setting aside their most cherished beliefs,” said Rupali Sharma, founder of and senior counsel at the Lawyering Project. “Their faith commands them to place others before themselves, and so when they don’t provide abortion care to someone who could now suffer long-term debilitating physical or mental health consequences, they feel like they’re putting their license, their families, their freedom from imprisonment above that patient, and that too was something that these physicians just cannot abide by.”
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs ask for the law to be overturned or at least clarified to require law enforcement to defer to a woman’s doctor in the cases excepted under the law. They argue the law discriminates by allowing for some secular exceptions but not religious ones.
“South Carolina’s Abortion Ban is neither religiously neutral nor generally applicable,” the complaint reads. “It allows people to terminate potential life for a wide variety of secular purposes. These allowances undermine South Carolina’s purported interest in criminalizing the termination of potential life as much as abortion care compelled by Plaintiffs’ deeply held beliefs would.”
Sharma said that before the 2022 Dobbs decision, the Lawyering Project argued that an Indiana restriction requiring abortion clinics to bury or cremate the remains from all abortions and miscarriages violated the free exercise clause. They successfully blocked the law until 2023, when the injunction was suspended.
Since then, religious progressives have challenged abortion bans in Florida, Indiana, and Kentucky using arguments that their faith compels them to obtain abortions in certain circumstances. The lawsuits in Florida and Kentucky were dismissed for lack of standing while litigation continues in Indiana.
Abortion-law expert Mary Ziegler said that unlike these state lawsuits, the South Carolina doctors might have a better claim of standing because they can cite direct harm, as they’re prohibited from providing care their religion would mandate. But she said that while legal scholarship has grown around the secular versus religious exceptions argument, the legal theory has rarely been tested in court. The University of California Davis law professor noted that in the 2014 Hobby Lobby decision plaintiffs were granted relief even though they weren’t directly administering care.
“It wasn’t like the employer in Hobby Lobby was giving people birth control. There were lots of other steps along the way, whereas in this case the physicians are arguing that they are … not intervening when they feel religiously obligated to,” Ziegler said.
In some of these abortion-rights religious freedom cases, the challenged states have cast doubt on plaintiffs’ sincere religious beliefs.
Sharma says to doubt the religious and conscientious beliefs of her clients is not to understand their jobs.
“It’s about when you see suffering and you’re empowered to stop it, you stop it, right?” Sharma said. “And the idea that these things wouldn’t be central to most faiths, is kind of astounding to me. Of course, abortion and religion are interlinked, because abortion for many people and religion for many people is about you mattering and your life mattering and your family mattering, and being able to preserve those things and protect those things.”
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
SUPPORT
Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.
SUMMARY: This year, Vicente Fernandez’s “El Rey” and Freddy Fender’s “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” were inducted into the National Recording Registry, alongside Lin-Manuel Miranda’s *Hamilton* album. Congressman Joaquin Castro has championed the inclusion of more Latino artists in the registry, noting that Latino representation is only 5%. Over the last three years, with input from constituents, Castro has successfully nominated 30 songs and albums, including iconic Latino tracks. He advocates for more Latino contributions to be recognized, including Selena’s work. Castro will continue gathering nominations for 2026, aiming to better reflect Latino cultural influence in the registry.
Each year since 2000, the Library of Congress has selected influential songs and albums to be preserved in the National Recording Registry. This year, three Latino artists were inducted — two of them with deep roots in Latino culture and South Texas.
This is an interview with University of Louisiana System President Rick Gallot that took place earlier this month about how the legislative session and federal changes will impact higher education in Louisiana. It has been edited for length and clarity.
You can also listen to a version of this interview on our new podcast The Light Switch.
Piper Hutchinson: What do you think is coming for higher education this session?
Rick Gallot: I think certainly starting with a standstill budget is always better than starting with a proposed cut. So, you know, we’re certainly very grateful for that. I think there’s a lot of uncertainty, coming out of Washington and with the constitutional amendments that did not pass, obviously that has created some angst in terms of what do we do now, right? And so I think there is, again, just an overall level of uncertainty that we’ll see it … kind of play out over time.
I think if you look at the increased revenue from the sales, sales taxes and other things, we’re certainly not in a real bad spot right now as a state in terms of our finances. So I’m still optimistic that we will work through the challenges in the session, and we will come out good on the other side.
Hutchinson: Looking at the bills that we have so far, what do you think is going to be the most impactful for higher education?
Gallot: It’s hard to say, and when you look at what’s filed versus what ultimately makes it through the process; all bills filed on the front end don’t always make it. Rep. (Emily) Chenevert has come back with another diversity, equity and inclusion bill. We will certainly have to see how that plays out. The bill she had last year started one way and ended up another. … Certainly with all other higher ed leaders, she was very receptive to meeting with us and working through some of those challenges last year. At the end of the day, I think the budget is always going to be the main focus that could impact the trajectory going forward.
Hutchinson: There’s one bill that’s going to have a big impact for your system, talking about transferring UNO back to the LSU System. What should we expect on that front?
Gallot: For me personally, it’s a full-circle moment. I was in the house when UNO was transferred from LSU to the University of Louisiana System. You know, I just want what’s best for the students, for the campus community at the University of New Orleans. It is a legislative prerogative. They have the authority to transfer universities from one system to the other. So if this legislation is successful, we will certainly do our part to ensure that it is a seamless transition. We will work with LSU, with Board of Regents and with the legislature to ensure that the transition is as smooth as it could possibly be.
Hutchinson: What’s that like for you [as a former legislator] during the legislative session, being kind of outside the rails?
Gallot: Well, I certainly have a lot of respect for our legislators and the sacrifices they all make in serving. I’m a huge fan of Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits,” and one of those is: “Seek, first to understand then to be understood.” And so I think that’s helpful to understand the pressures that our legislators are under, knowing that there’s a lot that they have to balance. I think it’s helpful, quite frankly. And I don’t think I burned any bridges while here.
I mean, I did oversee redistricting, so maybe I did [burn] one or two. But for the most part, I still have good relationships with many of my former colleagues … who are still there. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to be a part of the process but from this side.
Hutchinson: There has been a little bit of controversy in the LSU System lately, that’s reignited these conversations about curbing tenure. What are you hearing on that front, and what would that mean for higher education as a whole if they did take an axe to tenure?
Gallot: Going back to COVID, and you think about faculty members, who go through the process of, not only a bachelor’s and a master’s and a terminal degree. You know, they get hired, they’re on a tenure track, they’re researching, they’re writing, they’re building their portfolio, and at the appropriate time they apply for tenure. I think we have to respect that process.
I think it is one that is deeply rooted in higher education, and so I think we certainly have to respect faculty and that they have earned this.
Now, having said that, it’s always one or two bad apples that will spoil the barrel, as they say. I don’t know that simply doing away with tenure is the answer.
If the legislature passes something, then we, as a state system, will certainly abide by whatever changes may be made. I think we want accountability at all levels, that we want our students to be in the best position to learn. We want our faculty to be in the best position to teach, and that our students would graduate and go out and make a difference in society. So we’ll certainly be watching it closely, and hopefully we will see thoughtful debate throughout the process. And again, with whatever the ultimate result is, we will work with it.
Hutchinson: I can’t not talk about what’s going on at the federal level. We’re talking about cutting research funding. There are concerns about immigration and graduate students, and certainly tariffs could increase expenses for higher education. How is the UL System adapting to all of this?
Gallot: Right now there’s so much uncertainty just across the board. Whether it’s the potential loss of research funding and indirect cost, for instance, universities build their budgets based upon what they believe the revenue stream will be from these research grants. I’m hopeful that we will sort of get through this period of uncertainty, and we will see things sort of settle down to be a little more predictable. But you know, at the same time, we will have to adjust if the rules are changed. If the funding formulas are changed, we will just have to adapt. We always have and we always will.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
SUBSCRIBE
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
SUPPORT
Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Nolan McKendry | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-18 10:25:00
(The Center Square) — The Louisiana Department of Health continues to struggle with a range of persistent financial and compliance issues, according to a new report released by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.
Despite some progress, the agency has failed to resolve the majority of its prior audit findings — some of which have gone uncorrected for as long as seven years.
The audit, which reviewed the status of problems flagged in a March 2024 management letter, found that LDH had resolved only one issue: inadequate controls over and noncompliance with National Correct Coding Initiative requirements.
The remaining concerns — ranging from financial misreporting to Medicaid eligibility and provider oversight — remain unresolved and, in some cases, have worsened.
Among the most significant issues: LDH could not provide documentation to show that $248 million in Medicaid expenditures reported to the federal government had a matching state share as required. That shortfall led auditors to identify $168 million in federal questioned costs.
Additionally, the department failed to properly update federal cost-share percentages in state accounting systems for half the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024 — resulting in another $87.6 million in questioned federal costs.
In response, LDH management admitted the reporting errors and attributed the failures to staffing shortages and insufficient training.
The department said it has hired a vendor to provide support and training for federal reporting requirements and has launched a broader staff development plan aimed at improving accuracy and compliance.
Other key findings include:
For the seventh straight year, LDH failed to fully enroll and screen all Medicaid managed care and dental providers as required by federal law, leaving gaps in the accuracy and reliability of provider information.
For the fourth consecutive year, the department lacked adequate financial controls and submitted inaccurate federal schedules used to track expenditures of federal awards.
Payroll certification failures also persisted for a third year, with auditors finding LDH had not followed procedures for timesheet approvals or leave requests.
Disproportionate Share Hospital payments exceeded the federally-allocated limit by $4.2 million due to inadequate reconciliation.
Maternity kick payments — lump sum payments made to managed care organizations when a member becomes pregnant—remained noncompliant for the second straight year, increasing the risk of overpayments.
Eligibility determinations for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program remained plagued by internal control issues for the fifth year in a row.
Billing problems in behavioral health services continued into a sixth year, with auditors citing ongoing failures by LDH and its contractors, including Magellan Health Services, to prevent and detect improper claims.
Home and community-based services under the state’s Medicaid waiver programs were also paid without adequate documentation for the second year in a row.
