Georgia Abortion Law Should Take Effect, Appeals Court Rules – Deadline

A federal appeals court ruled today that Georgia’s restrictive 2019 abortion law should be allowed to take effect, overruling a lower court.

The three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Mississippi case that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned abortion law to the states, “makes clear no right to abortion exists under the Constitution, so Georgia may prohibit them.”

Georgia’s law bans most abortions when there’s a detectable human heartbeat, which can be as early as six week, before women know they are pregnant. It has exceptions for rape and incest if a police report is filed, if the mother’s life is at risk, or the fetus is medically unviable. Georgia is a a major film and television production hub, and home to Tyler Perry Studios.

The appeals court also rejected arguments that an unusual “personhood” provision that’s part of the law is unconstitutionally vague. The provision gives a fetus the same legal rights as everyone else with far-reaching implications.

The Georgia law first passed in 2019, prompting an immediate outcry from Hollywood and threats from producers from Disney to Netflix on pulling out of the state if the law ever went into effect. It never did. Reproductive rights groups and the ACLU sued and a district court judge granted an injunction and ultimately struck it down, ruling in July of 2020 that it was unconstitutional.

It was appealed then but last September the appeals court issued a stay in its review of the pending the Supreme Court decision on the Mississippi case, called Dobbs V Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Court ruled on that June 24, finding “that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.”

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