Abortion providers and advocacy groups filed a new lawsuit on Tuesday challenging Georgia’s abortion law based on data protection in the state constitution.
The law, passed in 2019, effectively bans most abortions about six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.
A federal judge ruled it unconstitutional and blocked it, but a federal appeals court let it go into effect last week after the US Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade, who had protected abortion rights for nearly five decades.
“SisterSong and our partners have fought against Georgia’s six-week abortion ban from the beginning, and today we’re sending a clear message that we’re not giving up,” said Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, the lead plaintiff in the case .
The lawsuit was not filed with the Federal Supreme Court, but with the Higher Regional Court.
The law “violates the fundamental right of Georgians under the Georgian Constitution to be free from unjustified state interference in their “life”. . . Body and health’ – a liberty interest that inherently encompasses a person’s decision whether to carry a pregnancy to term,” the lawsuit reads.
The Georgian constitution provides particularly robust protections for the fundamental right to privacy, which does not allow political interference in a person’s deeply personal decision whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, the lawsuit states.
The law is also invalid from the outset because it violated the federal constitution when it was passed, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also challenges a provision that allows prosecutors to review medical records.
The law bans most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” is present.
Heart activity can be detected by ultrasound in cells within an embryo, which eventually becomes the heart as early as the sixth week of pregnancy.
Georgian law contains exceptions for rape and incest as long as a police report is filed. It also allows for later abortions when the mother’s life is in danger or a serious medical condition renders a fetus nonviable.
The lawsuit argues that an effective ban of about six weeks means some women won’t know they’re pregnant until it’s too late to have an abortion in Georgia.
For a person with a regular four-week menstrual cycle, the law’s limit is just two weeks after the first missed period.
But many people have irregular menstrual bleeding because of health problems, use of contraception or breastfeeding, and some people mistake bleeding that’s common in early pregnancy for a period of time, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also argues that making a woman who is having a miscarriage wait until fetal heart activity has stopped before getting an abortion is unfair and medically risky.
“According to this definition, a patient who suffers a miscarriage would only have access to medical care to empty her uterus if the process of pregnancy loss had already terminated embryonic/fetal cardiac activity,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit refutes the law’s argument that there have been medical advances showing that “unborn children are a class of living, distinct individuals,” stating that embryos at six weeks are neither alive nor distinct.
It also said the early deadline poses challenges for women who have to travel to obtain an abortion and “forces patients to decide quickly how to proceed with their pregnancy — within just hours or days,” and cuts off their time to think or consult with others.
The lawsuit states that the law compels patients with a pregnancy-related mental health crisis to continue that pregnancy and go through childbirth.
“A psychiatric illness is no less a medical condition than a physical illness — and suicide is a leading cause of maternal death,” the lawsuit states.
The legal exception allowing abortions for rape and incest after a police report is impractical, the lawsuit says, adding that the exception allowing abortions for abnormalities likely to result in the death of the fetus or child assumes that a doctor can perfectly predict these problems.
“But medicine isn’t that clear cut, and a doctor can’t predict exactly how long a baby will survive or how much suffering it will have before dying,” the suit reads.
“Furthermore, a doctor cannot be sure that his medical judgment will not later be challenged by a prosecutor or judge.”
