Planned Parenthood South Atlantic joined two physicians and Greenville Women’s Clinic to file a petition Thursday asking the Supreme Court of South Carolina to reconsider its decision to uphold a strict state law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The appeal comes just one day after the court ruled the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act to be constitutional.

In the petition, the appellants argued that the court failed to define the term “fetal heartbeat” in its ruling earlier this week. Relying on the interpretive principle of plain meaning, the appellants argue that the clause, “the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart,” being offset by commas suggests that it provides additional information describing “cardiac activity” and thus can be omitted. Further, the appellants argued that the ambiguity should be resolved in a manner consistent with the medical definition of “fetal heartbeat”—when “the chambers of the heart have been developed and can be detected via ultrasound,” which is a development that typically occurs between 17 and 20 weeks.

The appellants also cited the rule of lenity, arguing that penal statutes “carry the extreme consequence of the deprivation of an individual’s liberty,” and therefore, the ambiguity should be constructed in favor of the appellants.

Ultimately, they allege that the ambiguity created by the lack of a clear definition leaves abortion providers “in an untenable position.” According to the petition:

Failure to answer this question leaves Respondents—the only abortion providers in the state—in an untenable position. Faced with the specter of the severe criminal and civil penalties the Act imposes on anyone performing an abortion in violation of the ban, in the hours since the Court issued its ruling, Respondents had no choice but to stop providing abortion services to South Carolinians whose pregnancies have progressed past approximately six weeks. South Carolina has already seen the devastation that a ban on abortion after approximately six weeks will wreak on the public health of this state.

Thursday’s petition relies on statutory interpretation arguments, rather than constitutional arguments which were the foundation of the appellants’ initial suit filed in May after South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed the bill into law. In addition to requesting clarification of the statutory language, the appellants ask the court to enter an emergency temporary restraining order (TRO) while the language is considered.