Twenty states led by Alabama are supporting South Carolina’s defense of a new abortion law, arguing that a federal judge was wrong to pause the entire measure instead of just the portion being challenged in court. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall argued that U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis was wrong to pause the entire measure in a July 13 filing with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (pdf) on behalf of the states. “South Carolina’s fetal heartbeat law was struck down in an error-filled district court opinion,” Marshall wrote. “Although Planned Parenthood and the other plaintiffs challenged only the law’s regulation of abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, the district court enjoined the law in its entirety—including portions of the law that dozens of other states already have and regularly enforce.” The judge’s ruling, Marshall wrote, “treads on South Carolina’s sovereign ability to decide for itself the purposes of its legislation” …