ATLANTA — Georgia’s highest court will decide whether or not the state’s six-week ban on abortions is constitutional. Channel 2 Action News has learned that the Georgia Supreme Court will issue its ruling early Tuesday morning.
The justices are not deciding whether abortion is legal in Georgia. It’s considering if the law banning it after about six weeks is legal.
As it stands currently, the heartbeat abortion law bans abortions at six weeks. Abortions after about six weeks are allowed in cases of rape and incest, as long as a police report is filed. Abortion is also allowed when a mother’s life is at risk, or if the fetus is not medically viable.
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The heartbeat abortion law has been in legal battles since Gov. Brian Kemp first signed it in 2019. The courts made several key rulings on the law last year.
On July 20, 2022, a federal appeals court judge ruled the state’s heartbeat abortion law was allowed to take effect immediately. The move came weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
On Nov. 15, 2022, a Fulton County Superior Court judge overturned Georgia’s six-week ban on abortions, ruling that it violated the U.S. Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court precedent when it was passed and signed into law. Overturning the law meant abortions were allowed again until 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr filed an immediate appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court. Carr’s office also asked the high court for an order putting the decision on hold while the appeal was pending.
On Nov. 23, 2022, the Georgia Supreme Court granted an emergency stay of the lower’s court’s ruling, which allowed the heartbeat abortion law to go into effect again as the state’s appeals continue.
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Back in March, the Georgia Supreme Court heard the case from the state and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Attorneys for the ACLU argued that, since Roe v. Wade was still in place in 2019, Georgia’s law was unconstitutional at the time. They argued that the law must remain unconstitutional.
“This is not a case where there was a gray area in this, in 2019. This was a case where there was 50 years of precedent,” ACLU attorney Julia Stone said.
But the state argued that what the U.S. Supreme Court said in overturning Roe v. Wade is that that case was always wrong, including in 2019.
“When the Supreme Court overrules that in Dobbs, what it is saying and what it said, by the way, it was explicit about this, is that Roe and Casey were always wrong, and those decisions were always wrong,” State Solicitor Stephen Petrany argued.
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