ALBANY – A Fulton County judge overturned Georgia’s six-week abortion ban on Sept. 2. Days later, the state’s Republican attorney general appealed the judge’s ruling.
On Monday, Georgia's Supreme Court reinstated the six-week ban while the appeal is heard. Robert McBurney, a Fulton County Superior Court Judge ruled that the ban, which had been in place since 2022, violated women’s rights to liberty and privacy under the state constitution. The decision returned abortion limits in the state to the prior law that allowed abortions up to about 22 to 24 weeks into a pregnancy.
“For these women, the liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability,” McBurney said in his opinion. “It is not for a legislator, a judge or a commander from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb anymore than society could — or should — force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.” Chris Carr, Georgia’s attorney general, filed an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court to reinstate the six-week ban while the court considers the state’s appeal.
“There is nothing legally private about ending the life of an unborn child,” the court filing read. Health care providers and advocacy organizations on both sides of the issues in southwest Georgia ar.