Georgia Supreme Court Revives State’s Six-Week Abortion Ban
- October 11, 2024
The Georgia Supreme Court stayed a trial court ruling enjoining as unconstitutional a state law banning most abortions after six weeks.
The high court granted, without additional discussion, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s emergency petition to temporarily block the ruling of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney, who found Georgia’s Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act violated the fundamental right to privacy and equal protection under the Georgia Constitution. See Georgia v. Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive, No. 2022CV367796 (Ga. Super Ct. Sept. 30, 2024).
The LIFE Act was enacted in 2019 but did not take effect until after the Supreme Court overturned the federal constitutional protection for abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Georgia law criminalizes abortions—with limited exceptions—after detectable fetal cardiac activity, which typically occurs around six weeks following the last menstrual period.
“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 said. The ruling reverted to Georgia’s prior standard, which prohibited abortions after the point of fetal viability.
In his petition to the high court, Carr argued the “state suffers significant and irreparable harm every moment that the LIFE Act is enjoined."
A sole dissenting opinion said the state failed to show the need for urgency to support deviating from the high court’s typical procedure of denying such petitions. “The parties’ competing arguments about the harm flowing from either the enforcement or the non-enforcement of the statutory provisions at issue will form the crux of the appeal to come and should not be predetermined in the State’s favor before the appeal is even docketed,” the dissent said.
“The injunction at issue here concerns much more than a discrete legal dispute between particular parties. 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,” the dissent wrote.
The case was back before the trial court on remand from the Georgia Supreme Court, which in October 2023 reversed an earlier ruling that the ban was void ab initio because it was unconstitutional when enacted in 2019 before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).