Just one week after a Georgia judge restored broad access to abortion in the state by blocking its six-week abortion ban, the Georgia supreme court ruled on Monday to reinstate the ban.
The ban will take effect at 5pm local time on Monday and remain in effect while litigation over it plays out.
Abortion rights supporters quickly condemned the decision, which also came down weeks after news broke that two Georgia mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, died after being unable to access legal abortions.
“Every minute this harmful six-week abortion ban is in place, Georgians suffer,” Monica Simpson, executive director of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, said in a statement. SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective is a plaintiff in the legal battle over the ban.
Simpson continued: “Denying our community members the lifesaving care they deserve jeopardizes their lives, safety, and health – all for the sake of power and control over our bodies.”
Last week, the Fulton county superior judge Robert McBurney ruled that Georgia’s six-week ban, which outlaws abortion before many people even know they are pregnant, is unconstitutional.
“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” McBurney wrote in his fiery 26-page opinion. “Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.”
McBurney’s ruling permitted Georgia abortion providers to perform abortions up until about 22 weeks of pregnancy. In the week that the six-week ban was not in effect, abortion clinics and their supporters said interest in abortion appointments increased.
However, Georgia’s Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, quickly appealed McBurney’s ruling. On Monday, only one judge dissented in part from the ruling to reinstate the ban. One judge did not participate, while another had been disqualified from taking part in the case.
“Fundamentally, the state should not be in the business of enforcing laws that have been determined to violate fundamental rights guaranteed to millions of individuals under the Georgia Constitution,” Justice John Ellington wrote. “The ‘status quo’ that should be maintained is the state of the law before the challenged laws took effect.”
In the two years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, more than a dozen states have banned most or virtually all abortions. Abortion has also become a major issue in the presidential elections – including in Georgia, which Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are jockeying to win.
