The Georgia state Supreme Court docket reinstated the state’s six-week abortion ban on Monday after a decrease court docket allowed abortions to renew within the state.
The ruling goes into impact at 5 p.m. ET and can stay in place whereas the court docket hears the state’s attraction, which was filed by Christopher Carr, the state’s Republican legal professional common.
Justice John J. Ellington dissented partly, arguing in opposition to the ban being reinstated earlier than the state’s attraction is heard.
“Essentially, the State shouldn’t be within the enterprise of imposing legal guidelines which have been decided to violate basic rights assured to hundreds of thousands of people underneath the Georgia Structure,” he wrote. “The ‘establishment’ that must be maintained is the state of the regulation earlier than the challenged legal guidelines took impact.”
On Sept. 30, Fulton County Superior Court docket Choose Robert McBurney dominated that the ban was unconstitutional, writing in his resolution that the Georgia state structure assured the suitable to “liberty,” which features a “lady’s proper to manage what occurs to and inside her physique.” The state appealed the choice two days later.
Abortion rights activists rally exterior the State Capitol in help of abortion rights in Atlanta, Could 14, 2022.
Elijah Nouvelage/AFP through Getty Photos
The ban, which was signed into regulation in 2019 by Gov. Brian Kemp, prevents abortions from being carried out as soon as fetal cardiac exercise may be defected, which usually happens at about six weeks’ gestation — earlier than many ladies know they’re pregnant — and redefines the phrase “individual” in Georgia to incorporate an embryo or fetus at any stage of improvement.
There are exceptions for rape or incest till 20 weeks of being pregnant so long as the sufferer has reported the crime to the police. Moreover, a affected person can have an abortion up till 20 weeks if the fetus has defects and wouldn’t be capable of survive or if the affected person’s life is at risk.
The ban was blocked in court docket however was reinstated after the U.S. Supreme Court docket overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“Seeing state politicians present such little empathy or respect for Georgians’ well being and lives solely doubles our resolve to maintain combating till each individual has the liberty to make private medical selections throughout being pregnant and the facility to chart the course of their very own lives,” Julia Kaye, senior workers legal professional with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Mission, a litigator on the case, mentioned in a assertion.
