The sensitive issue of abortion in the United States is taking a new turn in Georgia with the reintroduction of a law that prohibits the voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) beyond six weeks.
Thus, the Supreme Court of this southeastern state decided on Monday, October 7, to suspend the decision made on September 30 by a judge of the first instance, Robert McBurney, who had overturned the said law on the grounds that the Constitution of Georgia guarantees. “a woman’s power to control her own body”while recognizing that this power is not “not unlimited”.
“When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume the welfare and responsibility of this separate life, then, and only then, can society intervene”he had assessed. Condemning “an arbitrary ban on termination of pregnancies after six weeks”a threshold where “many women are completely unaware that they are pregnant or at best are unsure”had the judge restored the permission for abortion until the viability of the fetus, i.e. around twenty to twenty-two weeks.
But the Republican authorities in Georgia appealed this decision. The State Supreme Court therefore satisfied them until it decided on the case.
Abortion at the heart of the presidential campaign
The debate about the limits of the right to abortion is at the heart of the campaign for the election on 5 November. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre responded by condemning “chaos and confusion for women and doctors” created by the highly restrictive laws enacted following the June 2022 US Supreme Court decision.
Republican candidate Donald Trump is proud that, through his appointments of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court when he was president, he led to the repeal of the federal guarantee of the right to abortion. With the overturning of Roe vs. The Wade decision, which has been in effect since 1973, the Supreme Court gave the states full latitude to legislate in this area.
In Georgia, Republican Governor Brian Kemp was thus able in July 2022 to put into effect the previously inapplicable provisions of a 2019 law that, with rare exceptions, prohibits abortion beyond the period when a first cardiac activity can be detected, approximately pregnancy.
Media outlet ProPublica reported in September the death of a 28-year-old woman at a Georgia hospital in August 2022, attributing it to a lack of care caused by restrictive abortion laws in that state.