Judge Overturns Georgia’s Six-Week Abortion Ban
In a shocking twist of events, a Georgia judge has overturned the state’s abortion law, which had been in effect since 2022 and restricted abortions after approximately six weeks of pregnancy.
In his decision on Monday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote that Georgia’s current abortion law violated the state’s Constitution.
He determined 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,” the Associated Press reported.
McBurney’s ruling will now allow abortions to be administered up to around 22 weeks.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s spokeswoman Kara Murray announced that he would appeal to the state court immediately.
Previously, the state court had overturned a different decision by McBurney that had blocked the law for other reasons. This might pause Monday’s ruling while the appeal is underway.
Murray stated that the state’s abortion ban is “fully constitutional.”
Georgia’s six-week abortion ban was passed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019, who criticized McBurney’s ruling.
“Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives has been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge,” he said in a statement.
“Protecting the lives of the most vulnerable among us is one of our most sacred responsibilities, and Georgia will continue to be a place where we fight for the lives of the unborn.”
Other conservatives also shared their discontent with the ruling.
National Right to Life Committee President Carol Tobias said that the ruling was “ridiculous.”
“This judge is an activist judge who is ignoring higher court rulings to do what he wants,” she said during an interview. “And I don’t think it’s going to stand.”
Executive director of the Georgia Life Alliance, Claire Bartlett, said that McBurney wrongly attempted “to create a right to abortion out of whole cloth by finding that it resides in our Constitution.” She said that she was confident about the Georgia Supreme Court overturning his ruling.
“It’s just ironic that based on his decision on Georgia’s constitutional protection against a person being deprived of life, liberty or property, which is what the argument was, that he chose to focus on a woman’s right to liberty rather than the child’s right to life,” she said.
Under Georgia law, women were prohibited from having an abortion once a “detectable human heartbeat” was present, which usually occurs at six weeks.
Over 4,400 abortions took place every month before Kemp passed the bill. Once the law was established in 2022, about 2,400 were administered a month, according to the Society of Family Planning.
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