The delicate issue of abortion in the United States is experiencing a new twist in Georgia with the restoration of a law that prohibits the voluntary interruption of pregnancy (abortion) beyond six weeks.
Thus, the Supreme Court of this southeastern state decided, on Monday, October 7, to suspend the decision adopted on September 30 by the trial judge, Robert McBurney, who had annulled said law alleging that the Georgia Constitution guarantees “the power of a woman to control her own body”although we recognize that this faculty is not “not unlimited”.
“When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume the well-being and responsibility of this separate life, then, and only then, can it intervene.”estimated. denouncing “an arbitrary ban on the termination of pregnancy at six weeks”a threshold where “Many women are completely unaware that they are pregnant or, at best, are not sure”The judge had reestablished the authorization of abortion until the viability of the fetus, that is, between twenty and twenty-two weeks.
But Republican authorities in Georgia appealed this decision. Therefore, the State Supreme Court satisfied them until it ruled on the merits.
Abortion at the center of the presidential campaign
The debate on the limits of the right to abortion is at the center of the campaign for the November 5 elections. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre reacted by denouncing “Chaos and confusion for women and doctors” created by the very restrictive laws adopted following the Supreme Court decision in June 2022.
Republican candidate Donald Trump is proud to have caused, by appointing three conservative justices to the Supreme Court of the United States when he was president, the cancellation of the federal guarantee of the right to abortion. With the invalidation of the ruling Roe vs. Wade, in effect since 1973, the Supreme Court gave states full freedom to legislate in this area.
In Georgia, Republican Governor Brian Kemp was thus able to bring into effect in July 2022 the previously unenforceable provisions of a 2019 law that prohibits, with rare exceptions, abortion beyond the period in which first cardiac activity can be detected. , approximately six weeks later. pregnancy.
ProPublica reported in September on the death of a 28-year-old woman in a Georgia hospital in August 2022, attributing it to a lack of care caused by that state’s restrictive abortion laws.
