Expanded abortion services are being provided after a judge’s ruling that Georgia’s six-week ban is unconstitutional. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has asked the state Supreme Court to block that ruling while the state’s appeal is pending. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has asked the state Supreme Court to allow Georgia’s six-week abortion ban to be enforced again while the state’s appeal is being considered.
The six-week ban was tossed aside Monday when Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C. I. McBurney ruled that it conflicts with the Georgia Constitution’s privacy and liberty protections.
Georgia’s 2019 law bans most abortion once fetal cardiac activity is detected, which is about six weeks into a pregnancy and before most women know they are pregnant. McBurney’s ruling resurrected Georgia’s previous law, which allows abortions until about 20 weeks.
Carr has appealed the ruling and is arguing that more harm would be done by letting expanded abortion services continue while the appeal is pending than not.
“The harm to the State and the public is significant and irreparable, as unborn children are at risk every day that the injunction continues. This Court granted a stay in nearly identical circumstances two years ago, and it should do the same here,” reads the state’s petition for emergency intervention.
The state’s attorneys argue that the ban should be restored because they say the state is likely to succeed in having the lower court’s ruling overturned, partly because they argue the Georgia Constitution is – and always has been – silent on abortion.
And the state pushed back on McBurney’s conclusion that the law’s treatment of pregnant women with a psychiatric crisis amounts to a violation of the state’s equal protection clause, arguing state lawmakers are not bound to treat the two identically.
“As before, every day that illegal abortions continue is another day that the lives of tiny, unique individuals are ended. There are toddlers alive today because this Court stayed the superior court’s previous order,” the state’s attorneys wrote in Wednesday’s filing.
The move was expected – it’s what the state requested back in 2022 when McBurney first ruled the ban unconstitutional – but attorneys and advocates on the other side of the case had hoped the state would let the lower court’s ruling stand.
Abortion rights supporters have blamed the six-week ban for the deaths of two pregnant women who died trying to have an abortion in the months after the law took effect in 2022. Recent revelations about their deaths have reignited debate over Georgia’s law, specifically its medical emergency exception for mothers, that has spilled onto the national stage.
Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement Wednesday that she was disappointed but not surprised by the state’s request to “reinstate this deadly abortion ban.”
“Time and time again, we see anti-abortion extremists using our bodies for political gain instead of advocating for the safety and health of all Georgians,” Simpson said.
“This abortion ban has forced Georgians to spend hundreds traveling across state lines and stole the lives of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller. This extremist crusade only further disregards our bodily autonomy, our lives, and our dignity.”
Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, which is part of the legal team challenging the law, said the state is taking an “extreme position to have control over decisions about reproductive rights.”
“We have already seen the tragic consequences of this extreme policy and we will continue to fight in the courts and at the ballot box,” Young said.
But anti-abortion advocates have blasted the attempts to tie the women’s deaths to the controversial 2019 law and accused Democrats of trying to capitalize on the tragedies.