Roe V. Wade Overturned: What It Means In GA

GEORGIA — The Supreme Court on Friday overturned the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision and ruled states may again outlaw abortion.

Georgia could possibly ban abortions after six weeks, which is when a fetal heartbeat is usually first detected, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Fourteen states have fetal viability laws, which includes Georgia. Viability—which can range from 24 to 28 weeks after the start of the person’s last menstrual period—must be determined on an individual basis, and determinations of both fetal viability and the patient’s health are at the discretion of the patient’s physician.

Gov. Brian Kemp signed the "Heartbeat Bill" in 2019. The bill, which was sponsored by state Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Acworth), would allow abortions in cases where the mother's life or health is in danger, or in cases of medical emergency. The bill also says that even an unborn child at any stage of development in the womb would be included in state population-based counts.

Georgia became the fourth state to pass such a measure, joining Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio.

"Today’s Supreme Court decision, while expected, is devastating," the Georgia Democrats shared on Twitter. "Let’s be clear: We unequivocally support the right to safe and legal abortion. We need to elect leaders up and down the ballot who will protect that right, no matter what."

Democratic State Rep. Park Cannon shared her sentiments on Twitter as well.

"As a state legislator and as a doula, I feel the weight of this moment profoundly," she said. "I want everyone who needs abortion care to know that I will never stop fighting back against anti-choice extremists. #Abortion is our right, our bodies must be ours to control."

The case at issue: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

The court’s repudiation of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and a subsequent case on fetal liability, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was expected. In May, Justice Samuel Alito Jr.’s majority opinion draft was leaked to Politico, setting the stage for a seismic shift in abortion rights.

At least 26 states are certain or likely to make it nearly impossible for a woman to get a procedure that was legal for her mother, grandmother or even great-grandmother, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research and policy group.

With the decision, abortion would be illegal or a nearly impossible procedure to get in about half of U.S. states, including large swaths of the South, Midwest and Northern Plains.

Abortion is already illegal or soon will be in 13 states with pre-existing “trigger” laws banning abortion set to take effect with the dismantling of Roe and Casey, and another four are poised to ban it, according to the Guttmcher Institute. Nine have so-called fetal heartbeat laws that make the procedure illegal before many women know they are pregnant.

Abortion rights were long considered settled law; and even as conservative states pushed at-the-time unconstitutional fetal heartbeat laws and others restricting abortion access to bring the court to this moment, many legal scholars doubted a right that generations of women and men had counted on was in serious jeopardy.

The case that made it to a full hearing before the court, Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion, came after former President Donald Trump appointed three conservative judges — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and, a few months before his term ended, Amy Coney Barrett, who replaced liberal stalwart Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September 2020.

The court heard oral arguments on the Mississippi case in December.

Lawyers for the state of Mississippi had proposed an array of mechanisms to uphold the 15-week abortion ban but said the court ultimately should overturn the "egregiously wrong" Roe and Casey rulings.

If the court "does not impose a substantial obstacle to 'a significant number of women' seeking abortions," the state argued at the time, the justices should reinterpret the "undue burden" standard established in Roe and give the state the authority to "prohibit elective abortions before viability" of the fetus.