Georgia’s Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of Republican officials who had appealed the decision of a trial judge to restore the authorization of abortions around 20 to 22 weeks.
The Supreme Court of the US state of Georgia has reinstated a law that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, suspending the decision of a trial judge.
The debate about the limits of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) is at the heart of the campaign for the election on 5 November. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre responded by condemning “chaos and confusion for women and doctors” created by the very restrictive laws that were passed after the Supreme Court decision in June 2022.
Republican candidate Donald Trump is proud that, through his appointments of three conservative justices to the United States Supreme Court when he was president, he led to the cancellation of the federal guarantee of the right to abortion. Through this reversal of half a century of case law, the Supreme Court has given states full latitude to legislate in this area.
“Arbitrary Ban”
In Georgia, Republican Governor Brian Kemp was thus able in July 2022 to put into effect the previously inapplicable provisions of a 2019 law that – with rare exceptions – prohibits abortion beyond the period when a first heart activity can be detected, approx. pregnancy.
On September 30, however, Judge Robert McBurney overturned that law, noting that the Georgia Constitution guarantees “a woman’s power to control her own body”though this power is not “not unlimited”. “When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume the welfare and responsibility of this separate life, then, and only then, can society intervene”he assessed.
Condemning “an arbitrary ban on termination of pregnancies after six weeks”a threshold where “many women are completely unaware that they are pregnant or at best are unsure”had the judge restored the permission for abortion until the viability of the fetus, i.e. around 20 to 22 weeks. But state Republican officials appealed the decision. The Georgia Supreme Court therefore satisfied them until it decided on the case.
Media outlet ProPublica reported in September the death of a 28-year-old woman at a Georgia hospital in August 2022, attributing it to a lack of care caused by restrictive abortion laws in that state.
