City Council to take up resolution against abortion law as case nears decision by Supreme Court

ATLANTA — The United States Supreme Court could rule on abortion rights any day now.

Georgia is waiting for that ruling to see if the state’s heartbeat abortion law will get reinstated.

Atlanta City Council is expected to vote on a resolution Tuesday that, in effect, will decide if the city will enforce the heartbeat abortion law.

The heartbeat abortion law essentially bans abortions after about six weeks.

Atlanta city councilmember Liliani Bakhtiari wants the city to not enforce Georgia’s heartbeat abortion law if an appeals court rules it constitutional again.

“It is very standard practice to direct your police force on what crimes to go after and what not,” Bakhtiari said.

Bakhtiari wrote the resolution, which is up for a vote Tuesday. It asks the city not to store or catalog any report of abortion, not to provide information to any government agency about an abortion, not to conduct surveillance or collect data on anyone or any group involved with abortion-related care.

It also asks the Atlanta Police Department to make enforcement of that law its lowest priority.

It does provide for exception in cases of force or coercion.

RELATED STORIES:

• Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade could have direct impact on Georgia heartbeat law
• Federal appeals court hears arguments over Georgia’s ‘Heartbeat Bill’
• 1st legal challenge filed against Georgia’s ‘Heartbeat Law’
• Federal judge blocks ‘heartbeat’ abortion law
• Georgia House passes ‘Heartbeat Bill’ outlawing most abortions after 6 weeks
• Gov. Brian Kemp signs anti-abortion ‘Heartbeat’ bill into law

“We wanted to show where the city stood, and we wanted to do everything that we could to protect people’s right to choose and protect their bodily autonomy,” Bakhtiari said.

Channel 2′s Richard Elliot went to the Atlanta BeltLine to find out what some people there think about all this.

Meenasha Reyes thinks the city shouldn’t enforce that law because she believes in more local control.

“I honestly think that it is better for the people because you cannot tell me that the people that live in Atlanta are the same people that live in Valdosta, Georgia,” Reyes said.

Hassan High disagrees. He’s pro-choice but he worries what might happen if a city, any city, just decided not to enforce state laws it didn’t like.

“In order to keep the system working, in order to avoid anarchy, we would need to go along with it,” High said.

Gov. Brian Kemp signed the heartbeat abortion bill into law. Elliot attempted to contact the governor’s office and the Kennesaw lawmaker who wrote the law for comment on this story.

So far, they have not returned a comment.

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What a change in abortion laws would mean for Ga's. Heartbeat Bill

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