Judge overturns Georgia’s ban on abortion from six weeks

ATLANTA (AP):

A judge overturned Georgia’s ban on abortion starting around six weeks into a pregnancy, ruling on Tuesday that it violated the US Constitution and US Supreme Court precedent when it was enacted and was therefore void.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney’s ruling took effect immediately statewide, though the state attorney general’s office said it planned to appeal. The ban had been in effect since July.

It prohibited most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” was present. Cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in cells within an embryo that will eventually become the heart as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. That means most abortions in Georgia were effectively banned at a point before many women knew they were pregnant.

McBurney’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed in July by doctors and advocacy groups that sought to strike down the ban on multiple grounds, including that it violates the Georgia Constitution’s right to privacy and liberty by forcing pregnancy and childbirth on women in the state. McBurney did not rule on that claim.

Instead, his decision agreed with a different argument made in the lawsuit – that the ban was invalid because it violated the US Constitution and US Supreme Court precedent at the time it became law.

Kara Richardson, a spokesperson for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, said in an email that the office intends to pursue an “immediate appeal”.

Georgia’s law was passed by state lawmakers and signed by Republican Governor Brian Kemp in 2019, but had been blocked from taking effect until the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, which had protected the right to an abortion for nearly 50 years.

The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Georgia to begin enforcing its abortion law just over three weeks after the high court’s decision in June.

Abortion clinics in the state remained open, but providers said they were turning many women away because cardiac activity had been detected. Those women could then either travel to another state for an abortion or continue with their pregnancies.

During a two-day trial in October, abortion providers told McBurney the ban was causing distress to women denied the procedure and confusion among doctors.

Abortion was a central issue in Georgia’s US Senate contest between Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker, which is now headed to a runoff in December. Two women accused Walker, who opposes abortion, of paying for them to have the procedure. Walker vehemently denied that.