Georgia Supreme Court halts lower court ruling, reinstates 6-week abortion ban

Georgia’s Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the state’s six-week abortion ban, halting a ruling from a trial court judge from just one week ago that had overturned the law. 

The order takes effect at 5 p.m. Monday, and will remain in place while the state’s appeal is heard.  

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney on Sept. 30 ruled the state constitution’s guaranteed right to “liberty” includes a person’s right to make decisions about their own health care.  

“Whether one couches it as liberty or privacy (or even equal protection), this dispute is fundamentally about the extent of a woman’s right to control what happens to and within her body” and to reject state interference with her health care choices, he wrote.  

The state appealed the ruling two days later. 

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed the ban into law in 2019, but implementation had been blocked until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. 

The law banned abortion after fetal cardiac activity was detected, which is usually about six weeks into pregnancy, before many people know they are pregnant.  

The state Supreme Court left in place part of the trial court’s ruling blocking a separate provision of the law giving state district attorneys broad access to the medical records of abortion patients in their respective counties.  

Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said the court’s ruling was “unconscionable.”  

“Every minute this harmful six-week abortion ban is in place, Georgians suffer,” Simpson said in a statement. “Despite all evidence that this ban is killing us, the Court sided with those more interested in limiting our access to care than seeing us live and thrive. The right to bodily autonomy transcends partisanship; it’s a human right that every Georgian deserves.”