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Georgia’s Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated the state’s ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.
In a one-page order, the Supreme Court has put a lower court ruling overturning the ban on hold while it considers an appeal. Abortion providers who had resumed proceedings six weeks after the lower court’s ruling must stop again.
Women’s health groups condemned the move.
Amy Kennedy, vice president of external affairs for Planned Parenthood Southeast, said: “It is unscrupulous that the Georgia Supreme Court has chosen to deny pregnant people the opportunity to decide what is best for their own lives and future.”
According to the order, seven of the nine judges had agreed with the decision. It said one was disqualified and another did not compete.
Fulton County Supreme Court Justice Robert McBurney ruled on Nov. 15 that the state’s abortion ban was invalid because of the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court under Roe when it was signed into law in 2019. v. Wade and another ruling allowed abortion for more than six weeks.
Protesters gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this year as it became clear that the Supreme Court was moving to overturn Roe v Wade and strip women of abortion rights
The decision immediately banned enforcement of the abortion ban statewide. Abortion providers had resumed the procedure over the past six weeks, though some said they were proceeding with caution because they feared the ban could soon be reinstated.
The Attorney General’s Office appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court. It also asked the Supreme Court for an order to stay the decision while the appeal was pending.
Georgia’s ban took effect in July, after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
It meant that a 2019 law banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat has been detected, usually around six weeks, could come into effect.
Heart activity can be detected by ultrasound in cells in an embryo that will eventually become the heart about six weeks into a pregnancy. That means most abortions in Georgia were effectively banned at a time before many people knew they were pregnant.
The abortion ban was passed by the state legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019. He is pictured here addressing his supporters on election night
The law made exceptions for rape and incest, as long as the woman first reports it to the police. It also allowed abortions after heart activity is detected when the woman’s life is in danger or when a fetus is determined to be non-viable due to a serious medical condition.
But almost immediately after it was passed, the state law caused a backlash, with several entertainment giants, including Disney, Netflix and Warner Studios, threatening to cut ties with the state if the measure ever went into effect.
Actress Alyssa Milano even called on women to boycott sex until the law was repealed.
Fulton County Supreme Court Justice Robert McBurney ruled last week that the state can no longer enforce its ban on abortion once a “detectable human heartbeat” is present
The law’s enactment was stalled until this summer, when the Supreme Court overturned the decades-old protections of Roe v Wade, allowing restrictions on the procedure to be introduced in states with trigger laws across the country.
When it went into effect, abortion rights activists launched another effort to get it off the books.
In a two-day trial last month, they argued that when the law passed the state legislature in 2019, Roe v Wade — the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States — had not yet been overturned.
According to them, state law prevented the legislature from enacting laws that conflicted with federal law.
Even if the court were to rule that the state has a compelling interest in protecting an embryo that begins only two weeks after a patient’s last menstrual period, the frankly inadequate exceptions make it clear that this sweeping ban is far from the least restrictive. . [of doing so],” argued Julia Kaye, a staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.
She also argued that the abortion ban violates the Georgian Constitution’s right to privacy and freedom by forcing pregnancy and childbirth on women.
But state attorneys argued that there is no right to privacy for people seeking abortion, and even if the court were to rule that such a right exists, it would not outweigh ‘abortion always harms a third’, namely the embryo or fetus.
“There is no right to abortion under the Georgian Constitution. There is nothing even hinting at a right to abortion under the Georgian Constitution,” argued Attorney General Stephen Pentay. Politics.
“We want to protect that third party and that’s really the end of it for us.”
McBurney ultimately agreed with the abortion activists, writing in his decision Tuesday that when the law was passed under Governor Brian Kemp, “It was unequivocally unconstitutional for any federal, state or local government anywhere in America, including Georgia — to ban abortions.” before they are viable. .’
He said its “means that courts – not legislators – make the law.
“Once the courts have spoken clearly and directly about what is law and what is and is not constitutional, legislatures and legislators are not free to pass laws that conflict with such rulings.”
McBurney concluded by writing that the state’s law “did not become Georgia law when it was passed, and it is not Georgia law now.”