Fulton County judge strikes down Georgia’s six-week abortion ban as unconstitutional

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C. I. McBurney has struck down Georgia’s six-week abortion ban. (Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder)

A Fulton County judge has ruled that Georgia’s six-week abortion ban is unconstitutional under the state constitution, allowing abortions to be performed again in Georgia as before the law took effect.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C. I. McBurney released his long-awaited ruling Monday on the broader question at the center of a lawsuit filed in 2022: Does the Georgia Constitution’s protections for liberty and privacy include a right to an abortion?

McBurney has concluded that it does – to a point.

“A review of our higher courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’ demonstrates 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,” McBurney wrote.

“That power is not, however, unlimited,” he added. “When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then – and only then – may society intervene.”

McBurney had previously ruled that Georgia’s abortion law should be thrown out because it was unconstitutional when passed in 2019, which was three years before the U.S. Supreme Court ended the federal right to an abortion. But the Georgia Supreme Court overturned McBurney’s ruling last year.

Georgia’s 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.

Under the ruling, abortions in Georgia are once again allowed up to about 22 weeks.

This is a developing story. 

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