The Georgia Supreme Court restores the veto on abortion at six weeks of pregnancy

The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the state’s ban on abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, a time when many women do not yet know they are pregnant, while reviewing a state appeal against a lower court ruling that had annulled the law.

The decision takes effect at 5:00 pm local time, meaning that most abortions will once again be illegal in the state after six weeks of pregnancy starting at that time.

However, the state Supreme Court’s decision left in place a lower court ruling that blocked a separate provision of the law that had given state prosecutors broad access to abortion patients’ medical records without the protections of due process.

The state’s near-total ban on abortion, known as the LIFE Act, was signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019, but did not take effect until July 2022, after it faced legal challenge and repeal by U.S. Supreme Court side of the case Roe v. Wade.

The law prohibits abortion care when a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur as early as six weeks, before many people even know they are pregnant. It includes exceptions for some situations to protect the life and health of the mother, and for some situations in which a fetal abnormality is detected.

Last week, a judge in Fulton County, Georgia, struck down the state’s six-week abortion, allowing the procedure to resume and almost immediately legalizing it up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

In that decision, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote that a review of “our superior courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’ demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes, in its meaning, in its protections, and in her set of rights, the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to and in it, and to reject state interference in her health care options.”

“That power is not unlimited, however,” McBurney continued. “When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume the care and responsibility for that separate life, then, and only then, can society intervene.”

Monday’s Georgia Supreme Court ruling, which takes effect while the court reviews the state’s appeal of the lower court’s opinion, will likely sow further uncertainty regarding access to abortion care in a key battleground state. battle where Democrats have put the issue at the forefront.

At the forefront of these stories are the cases of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, two Black women who died in 2022 after experiencing complications from taking abortion pills.

Miller, who had numerous health problems, had been afraid to see a doctor because of the law, and Thurman was hospitalized for 20 hours before doctors decided they could legally operate on her. ProPublica reported that a state board determined that both deaths could have been prevented.

Reproductive rights groups criticized Monday’s ruling.

“It is cruel that our patients’ ability to access the reproductive health care they need has once again been eliminated,” said Feminist Women’s Health Center Executive Director Kwajelyn Jackson in a statement: “This ban has “It has wreaked havoc on the lives of Georgians, and our patients deserve better.”

Planned Parenthood Southeast spokeswoman Jaylen Black called the ruling “a blatant example of the lengths to which anti-abortion lawmakers and judges are willing to go to strip Georgians of their fundamental rights,” adding that the ban “resulted in the devastating and preventable deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller and will continue to harm Georgians as long as it is in effect.”