(LifeSiteNews) — A Georgia judge ruled Monday that the state’s heartbeat law, which made it illegal for a woman to have an abortion after six weeks, is “unconstitutional.”
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney rendered the decision, declaring Georgia’s Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act “unconstitutional.” As a result, abortions will now be allowed to be performed in the state up until week twenty of pregnancy. The ruling defies a 2023 Georgia Supreme Court decision that the heartbeat law could stand.
The LIFE Act was passed and signed in 2019 and went into effect in 2022, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision which saw the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The law, when active, forbids abortions from being performed once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or at six weeks into the pregnancy, whichever comes first, except in cases of so-called medical emergencies or if the pregnancy is deemed “medically futile.”
It is important to note that even prior to the six-week mark, abortion is still immoral, and constitutes the murder of an unborn child. The true pro-life position, as affirmed by Natural Law and the Catholic Church, is a total ban on the deadly practice. This is also true when it comes to abortions done for “medical” reasons, as despite the claims of abortion activists, direct abortion is never medically necessary.
The Fulton County Superior Court had previously ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it was passed before Roe V. Wade was overturned, but that decision was overruled last year when the Georgia State Supreme Court ruled the law was constitutional in a 6-1 decision.
In Monday’s ruling, Judge McBurney said only women should be allowed to decide if they want to abort their child, not legislators or judges. “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,” the judge wrote, according to a Fox News report.
A statement released by National Right to Life (NRLC) underscored how the Superior Court’s decision defies previous federal and state supreme court rulings and refers to McBurney as an “activist judge.”
“In an act that defies reason, this activist judge has decided to ignore the 2023 decision of the Georgia Supreme Court that declared the Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act constitutional. This judge has chosen to make rulings based on his own beliefs rather than the law and higher court judgments,” the statement read.
A spokesperson for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said his office would immediately appeal the ruling to the state supreme court.