The Georgia attorney general’s office has asked the state Supreme Court to reinstate the restrictive abortion law that was struck down by a Fulton County judge earlier this week.
In a court filing, Georgia Solicitor General Stephen Petrany asked the justices to “affirm basic constitutional principles” and put on hold an order made by Fulton Superior Judge Robert McBurney earlier this week, which determined the state’s abortion law was unconstitutional because it denied a woman’s right to liberty by not allowing her to make decisions about her own body.
Georgia in 2019 passed a law that bans most abortions once a medical professional can detect fetal cardiac activity, typically about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many know they are pregnant. The law took effect in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed the national right to an abortion for nearly 50 years.
In its request, the state said there is no right to an “elective abortion” in the Georgia Constitution, adding that the right to privacy doesn’t include abortion because it “always harms a third party.”
“Every day that illegal abortions continue is another day that the lives of tiny, unique individuals are ended. There are toddlers alive today because this Court stayed the superior court’s previous order,” Petrany wrote in the motion.
In a press release, American Civil Liberties Union attorneys, representing abortion rights advocates and providers, said they were “disappointed but not surprised” by the request from the state.
“It’s clear that the state of Georgia has taken an extreme position to have control over decisions about reproductive rights,” said Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia. “We have already seen the tragic consequences of this extreme policy and we will continue to fight in the courts and at the ballot box.”
Two weeks ago, nonprofit news organization ProPublica first reported that two Georgia women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, died from abortion-related complications in the months after the law took effect in 2022.
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