Georgia’s controversial LIFE abortion ban, which forbids abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy, has been reinstated by the state’s Supreme court. The court has put on hold a lower court’s overturning the ban as it considers an appeal by the state attorney general’s office.
It not only upheld the state’s ban on abortion but also rejected the abortion sector’s demand for a 24-hour notice period prior to the ban’s restoration.
Watch | Gravitas Plus: Why are women being denied the Right to abortion?
The one-page decision did not provide any justification for granting the state’s request to reinstate the ban.
In the judgement, the court said that “the state of Georgia’s emergency petition … seeking a stay of the order of the superior court of Fulton county in the above-styled action is hereby granted.”
“To the extent the state also seeks an ‘administrative stay,’ that motion is dismissed as moot,” it added.
The so-called LIFE legislation has been reinstated barely one week after the Fulton County Superior Court declared it to be unconstitutional and invalidated it.
On November 15, Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney ruled that the state ban was invalid.
According to the verdict, the prohibition was unconstitutional since, at the time it was enacted in 2019, US supreme court precedent under Roe v. Wade and another ruling permitted abortions for pregnancies that have crossed the six-week mark.
McBurney in his ruling wrote that the Act may one day “become the law of Georgia”, however that can happen “only after our legislature determines in the sharp glare of public attention that will undoubtedly and properly attend such an important and consequential debate whether the rights of unborn children justify such a restriction on women’s right to bodily autonomy and privacy.”
