Georgia’s Supreme Court reinstated the state’s heartbeat bill, called the LIFE Act.
One of the judges, Justice John J. Ellington, wrote in a dissenting opinion that “the State should not be in the business of enforcing laws that have been determined to violate fundamental rights guaranteed to millions of individuals under the Georgia Constitution.”
“The ‘status quo’ that should be maintained is the state of the law before the challenged laws took effect.”
The move comes as the state requested that the bill be protected while an appeal is heard on a Fulton County judge’s decision to strike the law down.
The judge, Robert McBurney, wrote in a September 30 decision, “A review of our higher courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’ demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her health care choices.”
“That power is not, however, unlimited,” he added. “When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then — and only then — may society intervene.”
The decision allowed abortions to take place up to 22 weeks.
