The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday halted a ruling striking down the state's near-total ban on abortions while it considers the state's appeal. The high court's order came a week after a judge found that Georgia unconstitutionally prohibits abortions beyond about six weeks of pregnancy, often before women realize they're pregnant, the AP reports. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Sept. 30 that privacy rights under Georgia's state constitution include the right to make personal healthcare decisions. Under the order from the state's top court, the ban will be reinstated at 5pm on Monday, Reuters reports.
The Georgia ban was one of a wave of restrictive abortion laws passed in Republican-controlled states after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended a national right to abortion. It prohibited most abortions once a "detectable human heartbeat" was present. At around six weeks into a pregnancy, cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in an embryo's cells that will eventually become the heart. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed it in 2019, but it didn't take effect until Roe v. Wade fell. "Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives has been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge," Kemp said in a statement in response to McBurney's decision.
McBurney wrote in his ruling 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 healthcare choices." "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," McBurney wrote. The judge's decision rolled back abortion limits in Georgia to a prior law allowing abortions until viability, roughly 22 to 24 weeks into a pregnancy.
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