Georgia top court reinstates abortion ban

Anti-abortion protest in Georgia in October 2022 — Abortion is a 'core issue ahead of November's elections as voters weigh candidates and abortion-related ballot measures'

(Image credit: Ben Hendren / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

What happened

The Georgia Supreme Court voted 6-1 Monday to reinstate a restrictive abortion law, a week after a lower court judge struck down the 2019 law as a violation of the state constitution's privacy provisions. The six-week ban, passed in 2019 and in force since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022, will stay in effect as state Attorney General Chris Carr (R) appeals.

Who said what

Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney's Sept. 30 ruling gave "women in the state and across the South a short window" to obtain an abortion up to 22 weeks, The New York Times said. "Many women do not even realize they are pregnant at six weeks."

In his partial dissent, Justice John Ellington said Carr's office had failed to "show any reason for urgency" and the law should have remained on hold during the appeal. "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," he said. Carr commended the ruling and said he would "continue to defend the laws and the Constitution of the State of Georgia."

What next?

Abortion is a "core issue ahead of November's elections as voters weigh candidates and abortion-related ballot measures," The Washington Post said. Attention to reproductive rights has been "particularly intense" in Georgia, a key battleground state, since ProPublica reported last month that two Georgia women, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, died of abortion-related complications in the months after the ban took effect.

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Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.