A Georgia law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected is now enforceable, the Eleventh Circuit said on Wednesday, citing the US Supreme Court ruling that found no constitutional right to the procedure.
Judges at the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit reversed a lower court injunction on the state’s controversial abortion law, which banned the procedure after about the sixth week of pregnancy. The decision is the latest in a series of court rulings allowing state bans on abortion to go into effect after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Roe v. Wade lifted.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr asked the appeals court in June to allow the state’s abortion ban to go into effect. He said in a statement at the time that the “High Court decision in Dobbs is constitutionally correct and rightly returns the issue of abortion to States and the people – where it belongs”.
The Eleventh Circuit Panel, led by Chief Judge William Pryor, said Wednesday that “Georgia’s ban on abortions after a detectable human heartbeat is reasonable” and that “respecting and preserving prenatal life at all stages of development is a legitimate interest.”
The case follows a lawsuit filed in June 2019 by the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and other abortion rights groups, which argued that the state’s abortion ban “violates women’s substantive rights to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.” They also argued that the legal definition of a “natural person,” which includes the unborn, is “primarily unconstitutionally vague.”
Georgia state officials, defending the law, argued that the definition of “natural person” “clearly works” by “providing that unborn children with detectable heartbeats be included in the state’s population-based regulations.”
The case is SisterSong Women of Color Rep. Justice Collective v. Gov. of Georgia, 11th Cir., No. 20-13024, 7/20/22.
