Georgia Judge Strikes Down State’s ‘Unequivocally Unconstitutional’ Six-Week Abortion Ban
© AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli / Activists rally in support of abortion rights at the state Capitol in Sacramento, California
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On Tuesday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney struck down a 2019 law that banned abortions at six weeks after conception, when a so-called “fetal heartbeat” can be detected.
In his ruling, Judge McBurney said that “everywhere in America, including Georgia, it was unequivocally unconstitutional for governments - federal, state, or local - to ban abortions before viability … It did not become the law of Georgia when it was enacted and it is not the law of Georgia now.”
However, he noted that following the US Supreme Court’s June decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson to overturn its previous abortion-legalizing ruling in the Roe vs. Wade case, “it may someday become the law of Georgia, but only after our Legislature determines in the sharp glare of public attention that will undoubtedly and properly attend such an important and consequential debate whether the rights of unborn children justify such a restriction on women’s right to bodily autonomy and privacy.”
The state of Georgia, led by recently reelected Republican Governor Brian Kemp, has said it will appeal the decision.
Removal of the 2019 law means that until Judge McBurney’s ruling is overturned on appeal or Georgia passes a new law, abortions in the state remain legal until the 22nd week of pregnancy.
The decision is a big victory for abortion defense activists, who had considered the state to be at risk of a near-complete abortion ban in the wake of the Dobbs ruling, as numerous other conservative-dominated states have done.
So-called “heartbeat” laws have proliferated in recent years, but women’s health experts say the laws are based on faulty science, since what they inaccurately define as a “heartbeat” is electrical signals in a cluster of cells that will one day grow into a heart. Moreover, it’s not even called a fetus at the time that it becomes detectable - roughly six weeks after conception - but is still an embryo. According to abortion providers, that would ban 85% of abortions, since most people do not even know they are pregnant yet at six weeks after conception.
As a consequence of Georgia’s law, the state’s Department of Revenue made it possible for taxpayers to claim as a dependent an embryo or fetus that has reached the stage where such signals are detectable.
