SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday overturned a ruling striking down the state’s near-abortion ban while it considers the state’s appeal.
The Supreme Court’s order came a week after a judge ruled that Georgia unconstitutionally bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, often before women even realize they are pregnant. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Sept. 30 that privacy rights under the Georgia state constitution include the right to make personal health decisions.
The state Supreme Court put McBurney’s ruling on hold at the request of Republican Attorney General Chris Carr, whose office has appealed.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge John J. Ellington argued that the case “should not be predetermined in the State’s favor before the appeal is even filed.”
“The state’s job should not be to enforce laws that demonstrably violate the fundamental rights guaranteed to millions of people in the Georgia Constitution,” Ellington wrote. “The ‘status quo’ that should be maintained is the legal status prior to the entry into force of the contested laws.”
Clare Bartlett, executive director of the Georgia Life Alliance, called the Supreme Court’s decision “appropriate” and worried that without it, women from other states would come to Georgia for surgical abortions.
“There is no right to privacy in the abortion process because another person is involved,” Bartlett said. She added: “This is about protecting those who are most at risk and cannot speak for themselves.”
Monica Simpson, executive director of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, said the state Supreme Court has “sidered with the anti-abortion extremists.” Her group is among the plaintiffs challenging the state law.
“Every minute this harmful six-week abortion ban goes into effect, Georgians suffer,” Simpson said in a statement. “When we deny our community members the life-saving care they deserve, we endanger their lives, their safety and their health – all in the interests of power and control over our bodies.”
Executives at carafem, an Atlanta abortion provider that had planned to expand its services after McBurney’s ruling, expressed dismay at the law’s reinstatement.
“Carafem will continue to provide abortion services in accordance with the letter of the law,” said Melissa Grant, the provider’s chief operating officer. “But we remain angry and disappointed and hope that people will eventually return to a more sensible view of this issue that is consistent with the people who need care.”
Georgia’s law, signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019, was among a wave of restrictive abortion measures that took effect in Republican-controlled states after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade repealed in 2022 and abolished a national right to abortion. It banned most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” was present. Around the sixth week of pregnancy, cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in the cells of an embryo that eventually become the heart.
Georgia has its own criminal law that punishes illegal abortions with up to 10 years in prison for abortion providers, but not for women who have abortions. Additionally, the 2019 ban puts doctors at risk of losing their medical license if they perform unauthorized abortions.
Monday’s one-sided Georgia Supreme Court decision exempted a specific provision of the state’s abortion law from reinstatement.
Without providing an explanation, the court said the state could not enforce a subsection of the law that reads: “Health records must be accessible to the district attorney of the judicial district in which the abortion occurs or to the woman who has the abortion.” “stays carried out.”
Thirteen US states now enact abortion bans at all stages of pregnancy and four ban abortions in the sixth week of pregnancy.
McBurney wrote in his ruling: “Freedom 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 and within it, and to reject the state . “Interfering in their health decisions.”
“When a fetus growing inside a woman becomes viable, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then and only then can society intervene,” McBurney wrote.
The judge’s decision reverted Georgia’s abortion restrictions to a previous law that allowed abortions up to viability, around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Kemp criticized McBurney’s decision, saying, “The will of Georgians and their representatives has been overruled by the personal beliefs of a judge.”
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AP reporters Kate Brumback, Jeff Amy and Charlotte Kramon in Atlanta contributed to this story.
