The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the state’s six-week abortion ban while it reviews an appeal from the state to an earlier ruling from a lower court that had struck down the law.
The decision from the state Supreme Court goes into effect at 5 p.m. local time, meaning that most abortions will again be illegal after six weeks of pregnancy after that time.
The state’s near-total abortion ban, known as the LIFE Act, was signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019 but didn’t take effect until July 2022, after it faced a legal challenge and the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade.
Last week, a judge in Fulton County, Georgia, struck down the state’s six-week abortion, allowing the procedure to resume and almost immediately making it legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.
In that decision, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote that 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 what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.”
“That power is not, however, unlimited,” McBurney continued. “When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then — and only then — may society intervene.”
The Georgia Supreme Court’s ruling Monday — which takes effect while the court reviews the state’s appeal to the lower court’s opinion — is likely to sow further uncertainty regarding access to abortion care in a key battleground state where Democrats have put the issue front and center.
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