ATLANTA (AP) – A federal appeals court appeared on Friday to suggest that it would wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on a case overturning its landmark decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to abortion before appealing A lower court judgment ruled blocking a restrictive abortion law in Georgia.
The US Supreme Court will hear arguments in December about an attempt by Mississippi to overturn the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade, which upheld the right to abortion. Mississippi law would prohibit abortions after 15 weeks of gestation.
A three-judge panel of the US 11th Court of Appeals on Friday heard arguments over whether to overturn a lower court ruling permanently blocking a 2019 Georgia law that would have banned most abortions once a ” detectable human heartbeat ”. As early as six weeks after the start of a pregnancy, before many women realize they are expecting a pregnancy, ultrasound can be used to detect heart activity in cells within an embryo, which eventually becomes the heart. Abortion is currently possible in Georgia up to the 20th week of pregnancy.
District Chairman William Pryor asked attorneys on both sides if the case should be suspended pending the Supreme Court ruling on the Mississippi case. The lawyers on both sides said they were okay with this.
“I think that’s the sensible way to go,” said Pryor. “You both say you have no problem with that. Don’t you agree that we should really do that? We cannot allow the Supreme Court to do something for us every day. “
Elizabeth Watson, an associate attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project, pointed out that Mississippi’s 15-week ban would ban far fewer abortions than the more restrictive Georgia law.
Just over a month after Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed the law in May 2019, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for Reproductive Rights sued the law on behalf of Georgia abortion providers and an advocacy group.
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US District Judge Steve Jones ruled in July 2020 that the law was unconstitutional. The state appealed to the 11th US Circuit.
“The court rejects the defendants’ argument that the legal purpose is solely to ‘promote fetal well-being’,” Jones wrote. Instead, he wrote, the law’s specific references to Roe v. Wade and “established precedents related to abortion” suggest that the purpose was “to prohibit or de facto prohibit abortion”.
The law provides exceptions for rape and incest while a police report is filed. It also provided for later abortions when the mother’s life is in jeopardy or a severe medical condition makes a fetus un viable.
The law would also have given a fetus personality and the same rights that humans have after birth. That would turn a fetus into a dependent minor for tax purposes and create maintenance obligations.
The groundbreaking decision by Roe v. Wade in 1973 declared a fundamental right to an abortion before the fetus was viable. Planned Parenthood v. Casey narrowed in 1992 that states cannot place undue burdens on women who want an abortion before profitability.
Jeffrey Harris, a state attorney, argued that Jones should have heard from state experts testifying why it makes sense to use the detection of a heartbeat as a threshold.
Pryor said it still doesn’t seem to be the standard for “undue exposure”.
“It seems to me that based on the prescribed record, at least, there is no way you can win,” he said.
Georgia’s so-called Heartbeat Bill was one of a wave of laws passed by Republican-controlled lawmakers in recent years to attack these rulings as anti-abortion activists and lawmakers saw an opportunity in a new Conservative Supreme Court majority.
Harris also denied arguments that the definition of a fetus as a “natural person” was unconstitutionally vague, saying Jones should have allowed “healthy provisions for the welfare of the fetus” of the law that have nothing to do with abortion to enter into force.
Pryor indicated that the state would likely be more successful on these issues.
Watson argued that the purpose of the law was to ban abortion, both expressly and by changing the definition of a “natural person” to include fetuses. Because of this, she said, the whole law must be blocked.
Opponents of the law have said that changing the definition of a “natural person” around fetuses could criminalize all forms of non-abortion health care. The state has said this is not the case.
The arguments on Friday came amid an increased focus on abortion. Not only did the Supreme Court recently announce its intention to hear arguments in the Mississippi case, it also enacted a restrictive Texas abortion law earlier this month.
While the abortion landscape at Jones seemed settled last year, the Texas ruling “started shaking the ground,” said University of Georgia law professor Ron Carlson. The court did not rule on the constitutionality of this law, which also prohibits abortion once there is evidence of cardiac activity, but declined to block enforcement while the law is being challenged.
“This ruling in Texas seems like a straw in the wind that abortion laws are being reconsidered by this Supreme Court,” said Carlson.
