Demonstrators hold signs as they march against Georgia’s “heartbeat” abortion bill in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, on Saturday, May 25, 2019. Doctors can perform abortion after abortion. Photographer: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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A Fulton County, Georgia, judge on Monday overturned the state’s six-week abortion ban, allowing the procedure to resume and making it possible Maximum legal period of 22 weeks Pregnant.
this State Law The bill was signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019 but did not take effect until July 2022 after facing legal challenges and the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Justice Robert McBurney wrote in Monday’s ruling that “an examination of our high court’s interpretation of ‘liberties’ demonstrates that Georgia’s liberties include among its meaning, protections and set of rights the power of women to control” her her own body, deciding what happens to it and inside it, and rejecting state interference in her health care choices.
“However, this power is not unlimited,” McBurney continued. “When the fetus growing inside a woman becomes viable, when society is able to assume care and responsibility for its separate life, then—and only then—can society intervene.”
The law’s fundamental change from previous state law, the judge wrote, “drastically narrows the window of time during which a woman has the legal ability to terminate a pregnancy, starting at approximately twenty weeks (IEviability) drops to just six weeks, a time when many (if not most) women are completely unaware or at best unsure whether they are pregnant.
The case stems from a lawsuit filed by the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and other plaintiffs in 2019, shortly after Kemp signed it into law. When it faced legal challenges in 2022, McBurnie ruled that year that the law violated the 2022 U.S. Constitution and repealed it. However, the Georgia Supreme Court quickly accepted the case and allowed it to remain in effect.
