Georgia Supreme Court Reinstates Heartbeat Bill

The Supreme Court of Georgia on Monday reinstated the state’s “LIFE Act,” which protects unborn babies when they develop a heartbeat at around six weeks into the pregnancy.

The court granted the state’s request that the pro-life protections be kept in place while an appeal is heard on a Fulton County judge’s decision to strike down the law as “arbitrary.” Six judges on the court agreed with the state while one offered a partial concurrence and the remaining two did not participate. 

The court’s ruling was praised by pro-life advocates but decried by pro-abortion groups. The law will be reinstated at 5:00 p.m. on Monday. 

“Thank you [Governor Brian Kemp] and [Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr] for your continued and unwavering dedication to protecting the youngest Georgians under the LIFE Act,” pro-life group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America posted on X. 

Planned Parenthood called the Supreme Court’s decision “devastating.”

“Georgia’s Supreme Court reinstated a six-week abortion ban — putting the ban into effect just one week after a lower court found it unconstitutional,” the abortion giant posted. “Georgians deserve better. Every person should be able to get the care they need.” 

The law now being reinstated protects unborn babies at six weeks into development, when major development begins with their heart, brain, spinal cord, and arms. 

Last week, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney struck down the LIFE Act, which was signed back in 2018 by Kemp. 

“When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then — and only then — may society intervene,” McBurney wrote in his decision. 

He asserted that “liberty” in Georgia included “the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.”

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McBurney struck down the protections after a series of misleading stories were widely publicized that blamed the deaths of two women on Georgia’s LIFE Act. 

In one case, a woman died in 2022 from complications with the abortion pill because she developed an infection after taking a pill to end the lives of twins she was carrying and the babies’ remains stayed in her uterus. Unlike what was widely suggested, the LIFE Act would not have prevented doctors from removing the remains of the babies as they were already deceased. 

Georgia is set to be one of the battleground states that could decide the 2024 election and Democrats have focused much of their campaign efforts on pushing for a national guarantee to an abortion.