Georgia may now protect the lives of unborn children once a fetal heartbeat is detected, the state’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.
The court reinstated the Peach State’s ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a law that had been blocked by a county court last week.
On November 15, Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of the Fulton County Superior Court said the ban was unconstitutional when the state legislature approved it in 2019 — more than three years before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Georgia’s Attorney General’s Office appealed the ruling.
The statute originally took effect in July, about a month after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling allowing states to ban or impose further restrictions on abortions. It permits exceptions if the pregnancy poses an immediate threat to the life of the mother or if it threatens “the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”
Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who signed Georgia’s six-week abortion ban into law, won re-election this month, defeating Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, who supports legal abortion until a fetus is viable outside the womb.
Georgia is one of six states that forbid abortions to be performed once an unborn baby’s heartbeat can be detected, which is usually around six weeks gestation.
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