Georgia Abortion Ban Overturned
(Georgia Abortion Ban Overturned)A Georgia judge on Monday invalidated a state statute that effectively prohibits abortions beyond six weeks of pregnancy.
The decision by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney is unlikely to be the final word because the Georgia Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue.
Nonetheless, the decision means that women seeking abortions in Georgia will have better access, at least temporarily, to a procedure that has become mostly inaccessible in the South since the United States Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Judge McBurney determined that the six-week abortion restriction, enacted in 2019, violated Georgia’s Constitution, and his decision restores the state’s ability to perform the procedure until around 22 weeks of pregnancy.
“A review of our higher courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’ demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her health care choices,” the judge wrote in his 26-page ruling.
The judge went on to say, “That power, however, is not unlimited.” “When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then — and only then — may society intervene.”
When the United States Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision abolished the federal constitutional right to abortion in 2022, it left abortion regulation to the states. Since then, many of them have implemented abortion bans, and numerous lawsuits have been brought to challenge those bans, with abortion rights advocates contending that the prohibitions violate state guarantees of privacy, health, liberty, and family planning.
What distinguishes the Georgia case is that the state legislature passed a ban on abortion beyond six weeks — when most women are unaware they are pregnant — in 2019, three years before the Dobbs judgment.
Last year, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, sometimes known as the LIFE Act, rejecting doctors’ and advocacy groups’ claims that the statute was void and unconstitutional when enacted by the state legislature.
However, the court remanded the case to a lower court on the subject of whether the state’s Constitution provides a right to privacy and whether that right includes abortion, paving the way for Judge McBurney’s decision on Monday.
Shortly after the judge’s decision, the state indicated that it will take the case directly to the State Supreme Court.
“We believe Georgia’s LIFE Act is fully constitutional, and we will immediately appeal the lower court’s decision,” said Kara Murray, a spokeswoman for Georgia’s Republican attorney general, Chris Carr.
Because of the protracted legal struggle, abortion is expected to remain a big electoral issue in Georgia, a critical swing state in the 2024 election, particularly for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Ms. Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, went to Georgia a few weeks ago to see the family of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia woman who died of sepsis after waiting more than 20 hours for medical attention to manage an incomplete medication abortion.
According to ProPublica, Ms. Thurman and Candi Miller both died as a result of medical care delays caused by state abortion regulations. Their fatalities happened months after Georgia’s law went into effect.
In a conference call following Monday’s ruling, abortion doctors and activists praised the decision while simultaneously sounding a warning.
“Make no mistake, we still have a long way to go,” stated Monica Simpson, executive director of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, which filed the Georgia case. “This victory is one necessary step in our fight to champion bodily autonomy.”
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