In Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective v. State of Georgia, (GA Super. Ct., Sept. 30, 2024), a Georgia state trial court held unconstitutional under the state constitution Georgia's ban on abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected (usually around 6 weeks). The court said in part:
Before the LIFE Act, Georgia law required a woman to carry to term any fetus that was viable, that had become something that -- or more accurately someone who -- could survive independently of the woman. That struck the proper balance between the woman’s right of “liberty of privacy” and the fetus’s right to life outside the womb. Ending the pregnancy at that point would be ending a life that our community collectively can and would otherwise preserve; no one person should have the power to terminate that. Pre-viability, however, the best intentions and desires of society do not control, as only the pregnant woman can fulfill that role of life support for those many weeks and months. The question, then, is whether she should now be forced by the State via the LIFE Act to do so? She should not. Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote. Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have....
For these women, the liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability. It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could -- or should -- force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another...
Anticipating the virtually certain appeal, the court went on to conclude that even if it is mistaken about the constitutionality of the 6-week ban, the exception for physical health emergencies, but not mental health ones, violates the equal protection clause of the Georgia constitution. It also found unconstitutional the provision of the act making health records of women obtaining abortions available to the district attorney. However, it held that if the 6-week ban is constitutional, the conditioning of the rape or incest ban on a police report having been filed is constitutional. CNN reports on the decision.
