(Headline USA) The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday halted a ruling from a lower court judge stating abortion could be performed up to 22 weeks, instead of six weeks.
The high court’s order came a week after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Georgia could allow abortions until well into the second trimester.
The state Supreme Court put McBurney’s ruling on hold at the request of Republican state Attorney General Chris Carr, whose office is appealing.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice John J. Ellington argued that the case “should not be predetermined in the State’s favor before the appeal is even docketed.”
“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,” Ellington wrote. “The `status quo’ that should be maintained is the state of the law before the challenged laws took effect.”
Clare Bartlett, executive director of the Georgia Life Alliance, called high court’s decision “appropriate,” fearing that without it, women from other states would begin coming to Georgia for surgical abortions.
“There’s no there’s no right to privacy in the abortion process because there’s another individual involved,” Bartlett said.
She added: “It goes back to protecting those who are the most vulnerable and can’t speak for themselves.”
Georgia’s “Heartbeat” bill, signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019, took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, returning abortion back to the states.
The Georgia Supreme Court’s one-page order Monday exempted one specific provision of the state’s abortion law from being reinstated.
The court said the state can’t enforce a subsection of the law that reads: “Health records shall be available to the district attorney of the judicial circuit in which the act of abortion occurs or the woman upon whom an abortion is performed resides.”
McBurney wrote in his ruling 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.”
Kemp has blasted McBurney’s decision, saying: “The will of Georgians and their representatives has been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
