The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday stopped a lower court’s ruling from last week that allowed abortions up to 22 weeks, as opposed to six weeks, as it considers an appeal filed by the state.
The order from the state Supreme Court came a week after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that abortions must be regulated the way they were before the “Heartbeat Law” went into effect, meaning abortions could be allowed until the 22-week mark.
The Associated Press reported that Justice John J. Ellington argued against McBurney’s ruling, saying the case “should not be predetermined in the State’s favor before the appeal is even docketed.”
“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,” Ellington wrote. “The ‘status quo’ that should be maintained is the state of the law before the challenged laws took effect.”
GEORGIA JUDGE OVERTURNS STATE’S 6-WEEK ‘HEARTBEAT’ ABORTION LAW, CALLS IT ‘UNCONSTITUTIONAL’
The Georgia Supreme Court reinstated a previous abortion law blocking abortions from taking place after six weeks on Monday, overturning a previous court’s decision from last week. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed the “Heartbeat” abortion bill, also known as the Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, into law in 2019. The law made abortions after the six-week mark illegal.
McBurney called the law “unconstitutional.”
“The authors of our Constitutions, state and federal, entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning,” McBurney wrote in his final order last week. “A review of our higher courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’ demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide…
