Abortion rights protesters at the U.S. Supreme Court. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
This story was originally published by The 19th.
A Georgia court struck down the state’s six-week abortion ban Monday, allowing abortions to resume up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.
The decision will radiate across the South, where the procedure has been largely outlawed.
Georgia, home to about a dozen abortion-providing clinics, is now one of the two most permissive states in the region. In Virginia, the procedure is legal up through the second trimester of pregnancy, which ends at 26 weeks.
The six-week ban, which has been in effect since 2022, cut abortions performed in Georgia in half. Georgians who did not discover they were pregnant by the deadline — early enough that many people do not know they are pregnant — had to either travel out of state or order pills online if they wanted to get an abortion.
In the first 21 months since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Georgia had the second largest decline in abortions performed, according to an analysis by the Society for Family Planning, with abortions falling by almost 40,000.
“There was a significant cut to our volume because of the six-week ban,” said Calla Halle, who runs A Preferred Women’s Health Center, which has two clinics in North Carolina and two in Georgia. “Given the surge of need, I think we’ll go right back to being as busy.”
Halle said she hopes they’ll be able to resume providing abortions up to 22 weeks promptly — and she anticipates seeing patients travel from other states with heavy restrictions, including Florida and South Carolina, where abortion is banned after six-weeks of pregnancy.
Other Southern states — including Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee — all outlaw abortion almost entirely. North Carolina, two states to the north, allows the procedure up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, but requires patients make two visits in person to a clinic, separated by 72 hours, a stipulation that can be prohibitive for those traveling from far away.
That makes the Georgia decision one that is “obviously big,” according to Laurie Sobel, associate director for women’s health policy at KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research, polling and journalism organization.
“[Georgia is] going to be the closest place for people [to access abortions] in a lot of states,” Sobel said, adding that she believes the state will appeal the decision.
But as long as the decision is in effect, it could have substantial implications, alleviating any strains on clinics further north that have become destinations for abortion-seekers in the South.
“Georgia’s six-week ban left millions of people across a wide swath of the South facing drives of hundreds of miles to North Carolina and Virginia,” said Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College who studies abortion travel patterns. “Now, as long as the ban isn’t enforced, Georgia residents as well as people from Florida, Alabama and parts of Tennessee are going to be much closer to services.”
In the 26-page opinion, Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney said that abortions in Georgia needed to be regulated like they were prior to the six-week ban — known as the Life Act — being passed in 2019. McBurney noted that many people do not know they are pregnant at six weeks.
In his opinion, McBurney also noted that abortion bans have a disproportionate impact on women of color.
“It is generally men who promote and defend laws like the LIFE Act, the effect of which is to require only women – and, given the socio-economic and demographic evidence presented at trial, primarily poor women, which means in Georgia primarily black and brown women – to engage in compulsory labor, i.e., the carrying of a pregnancy to term at the government’s behest,” he wrote.
Prior to Roe’s overturn, 69 percent of people who got abortions in Georgia were Black, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 30 percent of Georgians are Black. Abortion bans have disproportionately affected Black women, who are more likely to live in the Southern states that have embraced restrictions.
Georgia still requires patients who get an abortion make two appointments separated by 24 hours. But the first visit can be done over the phone, meaning patients — including those potentially traveling from out of state — only have to do one physical visit.
The change comes as Georgia’s abortion bans have become a critical issue in the presidential election, especially after ProPublica reported the cases of two women who died in the state after they couldn’t access legal abortions. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is hoping to turn the state blue, has vocally criticized its six-week ban, which Republicans and abortion opponents have defended.