A judge in the US state of Georgia on Monday, September 30, struck down a 2022 law banning abortion beyond six weeks, claiming it violated women’s fundamental rights.
Denouncing, in his decision, “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”Judge Robert McBurney restored the authorization of abortion until the viability of the fetus, that is, between twenty and twenty-two weeks.
Judge says Georgia Constitution guarantees “the power of a woman to control her own body”but this power 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.
Thirteen states prohibit abortion
The debate on the limits of the right to voluntary interruption of pregnancy (abortion) is at the center of the American electoral campaign. The ProPublica media reported two weeks ago on the death of a 28-year-old woman, Amber Thurman, in a Georgia hospital in August 2022, attributing it to the lack of care caused by the restrictive health laws in this state.
Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris deplored the death of Amber Thurman, accusing the rollback of women’s rights orchestrated by her Republican opponent Donald Trump. The latter is proud to have brought about, through the appointment of three conservative justices to the United States Supreme Court when he was president, the June 2022 decision that canceled the federal guarantee of the right to abortion. By this reversal of half a century of jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has given States full freedom to legislate in this area.
Thirteen states currently prohibit abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with few exceptions. In Georgia, Republican Governor Brian Kemp managed to bring into effect in July 2022 the previously unenforceable provisions of a 2019 law that prohibits, with rare exceptions, abortion beyond six weeks, that is, the period in which that a first cardiac activity can be detected.
A decision by Judge McBurney already overturned before
“Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives has been overridden by the personal convictions of a judge,” Mr. Kemp condemned in a press release on Monday, after the court decision “Protecting the lives of the most vulnerable among us is one of our most sacred responsibilities, and Georgia will continue to be a place where we fight for the lives of the unborn.” he added.
The Center for Reproductive Rights and the influential civil rights organization ACLU welcomed Judge McBurney’s ruling in a statement, but stressed that Georgia authorities could “Choose to block it by reinstating the ban in the coming days”.
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Kara Murray, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, said she would immediately appeal to the state Supreme Court. The state’s high court previously overturned a separate decision by Judge McBurney that struck down the law on different grounds.
