Georgia top court reinstates ban on abortions after six weeks

Georgia’s highest court reinstated a ban on nearly all abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy on Monday while it considers the U.S. state’s appeal of last week’s ruling by a lower court judge blocking the law.

The order from the Supreme Court of Georgia allows the ban to take effect at 5 p.m. on Monday.

The lawsuit challenging the ban was brought by Atlanta-based SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective.

“Today, the Georgia Supreme Court sided with anti-abortion extremists,” SisterSong executive director Monica Simpson said in a statement. “Every minute this harmful six-week abortion ban is in place, Georgians suffer.”

The office of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney blocked the law on Sept. 30, finding that it violated women’s rights to privacy and liberty guaranteed by the state constitution.

The law bans almost all abortions after a “human heartbeat” is detected, typically around six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. It was passed in 2019 but did not take effect until the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned its longstanding Roe v. Wade precedent, which had guaranteed abortion rights nationwide.

McBurney had previously blocked the abortion ban in November 2022 on narrower grounds, but the state’s Supreme Court quickly overturned that ruling and sent the case back to McBurney for trial.

In his order last week, McBurney wrote that women “are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” and found that the state could only restrict abortion after fetal viability.

Monday’s Supreme Court ruling is temporary, but will remain in place until the court hears arguments from both sides and issues its final ruling.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Alexia Garamfalvi)