Georgia judge overturns state's six-week abortion ban

Citing a woman’s right to “control her own body,” a judge in Georgia on Monday struck down a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and made it legal for the first 22 weeks.

The six-week ban was signed into law by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp five years ago but faced legal challenges, thus didn’t take effect until July, 2022, NBC News reported.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision in 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion and allowing states to issue laws as they see fit.

But Judge Robert McBurney wrote Monday that a woman’s “liberty” includes a right decide what happens to and in her body and her ability “to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.”

The judge added that such power is not “unlimited," writing that "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.”

The judge also wrote that “many — if not most — women are completely unaware or, at best, unsure if they are pregnant” within the first six weeks.

According to NBC News, the case came via a lawsuit filed by SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and other plaintiffs in 2019 soon after Kemp signed it into law. In 2022, McBurney ruled that the law violated the U.S. Constitution, but the Georgia Supreme Court had allowed it to remain in effect.