Oct. 3 (UPI) — Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is asking the state’s Supreme Court to reinstate its six-week abortion ban, after a county judge earlier this week ruled it unconstitutional.
Carr, a Republican, filed his appeal Wednesday in a protracted fight over the state’s Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, which Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed in 2019 to provide full legal recognition to fetuses and to ban abortion after cardiac activity is detected, which generally occurs around the six-week mark of gestation and before most know they are pregnant.
The ban has been in effect since 2022 after the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court revoked federal protections for abortion by overturning the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling.
However, Judge Robert McBurney of Fulton County on Monday ruled the law unconstitutional, stating only when a fetus reaches viability may society intervene, and that the ban violates a woman’s right to liberty and privacy.
The ruling returns the abortion limit back to fetus viability, which occurs around the 24-week mark of gestation.
In his appeal on Wednesday, Carr said there is no privacy right to abortion.
“There is nothing legally private about ending the life of an unborn child,” he said.
“This Court is all but certain to reverse this barely veiled judicial policymaking.”
He said he is also seeking reinstatement of the rule amid litigation.
Critics of the ban have lambasted it in recent weeks, blaming the law for the deaths of two Black women — Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller — who were denied the operation in the state.
“This is appalling and cruel,” Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement Wednesday in response to Carr’s appeal, “but we won’t back down in the face of politicians more interested in scoring a political point than preserving the health, safety and dignity of their constituents.
“We will never stop fighting until every person has the power to make personal medical decisions during pregnancy and access the care they need.”
SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective is the lead plaintiff in the case challenging Georgia’s abortion ban.
