Georgia court overturns state abortion ban

A Georgia judge has struck down the state’s abortion law that has banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy since it took effect in 2022.

Georgia’s life law was overturned entirely by Judge Robert McBurney’s ruling, meaning the state must now allow abortions up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

The judge wrote in his order that “liberty in Georgia” includes “a woman’s power to control her own body, to decide what happens to her and what is in it, and to reject interference from the ‘State in its choices regarding health care’.

Georgia passed the Life Act in 2019, but it didn’t take effect until 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and opened the door to state bans.

SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective filed the original complaint with other plaintiffs in 2019, shortly after Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, signed the law.

When Judge McBurney reviewed the case in 2022, he struck down the law, ruling that it violated the U.S. Constitution.

However, the Georgia Supreme Court later took up the case and upheld the six-week deadline.

The case has since been sent back to Judge McBurney, who this time found that it violated the state constitution after a review “of our superior courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’.”

“Does a Georgian’s right to privacy encompass the right to make personal health care decisions? Clearly, it does,” the judge wrote in his ruling.

Gov. Kemp’s office criticized the judge’s decision Monday.

“Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives has been overridden by the personal beliefs of a judge,” Garrison Douglas, a Kemp spokesman, said in a statement.

“Protecting the lives of the most vulnerable among us is one of our most sacred responsibilities, and Georgia will continue to be a place where we fight for the lives of the unborn.”

But this decision could affect more than just Georgians.

This could open up access to abortion in the southern United States, where several Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed laws that significantly limit access to abortion procedures.

These laws force area residents to travel sometimes hundreds of miles to states like North Carolina, Kansas and Illinois to obtain legal abortions.

Justice McBurney highlighted the danger a six-week limit could pose to women in his order, writing that “for many women, their pregnancies were unintended, unexpected and often unknown well after the embryonic heartbeat began.” .

Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women, called the move “an important step in the right direction.”

“We are encouraged that a Georgian court has ruled in favor of bodily autonomy. At the same time, we cannot forget that every day the ban has been in effect has been one day too many – and we felt the dire consequences with the devastating consequences and preventable deaths of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller.

Thurman and Miller were named in two ProPublica reports revealing their deaths were linked to Georgia’s abortion ban. Their cases have been highlighted by Vice President Kamala Harris, who has made reproductive rights a centerpiece of her campaign for the White House.