A Georgia judge on Monday struck down a state law effectively prohibiting abortions beyond six weeks of pregnancy.
The ruling, by Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court, is unlikely to be the final word because of the expectation that the case will ultimately be decided by the Georgia Supreme Court.
Still, the ruling means that women seeking abortions in Georgia will have greater access, at least temporarily, to a procedure that has become mostly inaccessible in the South since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Judge McBurney found that the six-week abortion ban, which was passed in 2019, violated Georgia’s Constitution, and his ruling returns the state to allowing the procedure up until about 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,” Judge McBurney wrote in his 26-page ruling.
“That power is not, however, unlimited,” the judge continued. “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 U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision revoked the federal constitutional right to abortion in 2022, it kicked the question of abortion to the states to regulate. Since then, many of them have enacted abortion bans, and many lawsuits have been filed to challenge those bans, with abortion rights lawyers arguing that the prohibitions are unconstitutional under state guarantees of privacy, health, liberty or family planning.
What has made the Georgia case notable is that the state’s legislature approved the prohibition on abortion after six weeks — a point when most women have not yet realized they are pregnant — in 2019, three years before the Dobbs decision.
Last year, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the law — the Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, known as the LIFE Act — rejecting arguments made by doctors and advocacy groups that the law was void and unconstitutional when the state legislature approved it.
But the court sent the case back to a lower court on the question of whether the state’s Constitution protects a right to privacy, and whether that right encompasses abortion, setting the stage for Judge McBurney’s ruling on Monday.
Shortly after the judge issued the ruling, the state indicated that it would appeal 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 Chris Carr, a Republican who is Georgia’s attorney general.
The protracted battle in the courts most likely means that abortion will remain a major campaign focus in Georgia, a crucial swing state in the 2024 race, particularly for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Ms. Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, traveled to Georgia a couple of weeks ago to visit the family of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia woman who died of sepsis after waiting more than 20 hours for medical care to treat an incomplete medication abortion.
Ms. Thurman and another woman, Candi Miller, died after delays in medical care tied to state abortion restrictions, according to reporting by ProPublica. Their deaths occurred in the months after Georgia’s law went into effect.
In a conference call after Monday’s ruling, abortion providers and advocates hailed the ruling but also sounded a cautionary note.
“Make no mistake, we still have a long way to go,” said Monica Simpson, executive director of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, which brought the Georgia case. “This victory is one necessary step in our fight to champion bodily autonomy.”
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