A Georgia judge on Monday struck down a ban on abortions that had gone into effect with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, allowing them to resume beyond six weeks into a pregnancy.
“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,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in his order.
Only when a fetus could be considered viable outside the woman’s body, “when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then — and only then — may society intervene,” Burney wrote. “The liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability. It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could — or should — force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.”
Out of the more than 20 states that prohibit abortion at some stage of pregnancy with limited exceptions, Georgia was one of four that put the limit at six weeks of pregnancy, often before a woman knows she is pregnant.
The ruling nullifies the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, known as the “heartbeat bill,” signed into law by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019. The law forbid abortions as soon as a “detectable human heartbeat” could be discerned and was poised to go into effect as soon as Roe v. Wade fell. Since ultrasound can detect cardiac activity in embryonic cells before they develop into the actual organ, the law would kick in even before a heart had formed.
McBurney said his ruling returns the state to the law in place before 2019, when “proper balance” existed between a woman’s bodily sovereignty and “society’s interest in protecting and caring for unborn infants.”
Kemp’s office decried the ruling.
“Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives have been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge,” a Kemp spokesperson told WANF-TV. “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.”
With News Wire Services
