The courtroom says it might probably wait to determine on Georgia’s abortion legislation

ATLANTA – A federal appeals court appeared on Friday to suggest that it would wait for the US Supreme Court to rule on a case seeking to overturn its landmark decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to abortion before appealing a judgment A lower court rules that has a restrictive abortion law in Georgia.

The US Supreme Court is due to hear arguments in December over 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 that permanently blocked a Georgia law from 2019 that would have banned most abortions once a ” demonstrable 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 Mississippi Supreme Court decision. 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 think that’s really what we should do? I mean, it doesn’t happen every day that … do something for us. “

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.

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 aim was to ban or de facto ban abortion”.

The law provides exceptions for rape and incest as long as a report is made to the police. It also provided for later abortions when the mother’s life is in jeopardy or a serious illness renders a fetus un viable.

The law would also have given a fetus personality and the same rights that humans have after birth.

The groundbreaking decision by Roe v. Wade in 1973 declared a fundamental right to 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 “undue burden” standard.

“It seems to me that based on the prescribed record, at least, there is no way for you to 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 dismissed 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 not related to abortion to come into effect .

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 said changing the definition of an “individual” to include fetuses would change hundreds of Georgia laws regardless of context. They say it could criminalize all types 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, but earlier this month it put a restrictive Texas abortion law into effect.

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 challenged.

“This ruling in Texas seems like a straw in the wind that abortion laws are being reconsidered by this Supreme Court,” said Carlson.