Posted on 02/21/2025 10:07:54 AM PST by Morgana
The Planned Parenthood abortion business lost another effort to strike down the state’s heartbeat law that is saving babies from abortions.
The Georgia Supreme Court voted 6-1 to direct a trial court to reassess whether abortion activists even have standing to challenge the law in the first place. This directive follows a recent decision that altered standing rules within the state.
The high court’s decision means that the abortion ban can be enforced and babies saved while the lawsuit against it continues/
The law in question, known as House Bill 481 or the “Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act,” prohibits most abortions after approximately six weeks of pregnancy.” That’s when an unborn baby’s heartbeat is clearly detectable.
This legislation was initially signed into law in 2019 by Governor Brian Kemp but faced immediate legal challenges that prevented its enforcement. It was only after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade that the law was allowed to take effect and babies could be saved.
Before yesterday’s ruling, the pro-life law received additional strong support in a brief submitted by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and 17 other states.
According to Liberty Counsel,
In October 2023, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney first ruled that Georgia’s 2019 LIFE Act was invalid because it was enacted under the binding precedent of Roe v. Wade, which had conferred a national right to abortion in the first trimester. Essentially, Judge McBurney determined an unconstitutional law can’t stand even if it becomes constitutional later. The Georgia Supreme Court quickly overruled Judge McBurney 6-1 citing that the U.S. Constitution has a “fixed meaning” and the 2022 Dobbs decision rescinded the “egregiously wrong” Roe decision and is now the controlling precedent.
Georgia’s High Court then sent the case back to Judge McBurney at the trial court level to consider the merits of other legal arguments against the law. In September 2024, Judge McBurney ruled again agreeing with pro-abortion advocates that the LIFE Act violates Due Process and Equal Protection rights by infringing on a person’s privacy and autonomy.
According to the Georgia Attorney General’s appeal brief, the right to privacy is the “right to be let alone” so long as one is not interfering with the rights of other individuals – something the LIFE Act specifically protects.
Indiana Attorney General Rokita and Florida AG and 17 other states added more background in defense of the LIFE Act in their amicus [“friend of the court”] brief.
The brief summarizes their argument:
“The elected representatives of the people of Georgia enacted the LIFE Act, which generally bars providers from performing abortions after the unborn child develops a detectable heartbeat. That law violates neither Georgia’s right to privacy nor its Equal Protection Clause.”
But their “Interest of the Amici States”—why they are filing this brief—is brilliant, stunning even. [Internal citations are omitted for clarity.]
In Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the right to abortion falls within a general “right of privacy.” That ruling was “egregiously wrong from the start.” Abortion has never been “‘private’ in the ordinary usage of that word.” It is, as Judge Henry Friendly said, “the antithesis of privacy.”
Far from a hidden thought whispered in the confines of the home, the effects of abortion ripple throughout society, from the women who endure it, to the medical staff who perform it, to the unborn lives extinguished by it. Yet Appellees invoke Georgia’s general right of privacy in an attempt to revive Roe in Georgia. Amici States—Indiana, Florida, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming—have a strong interest in defeating that bid to “short-circuit[]” Georgia’s “democratic process” by invalidating an abortion law enacted by “the people’s elected representatives.”
Like other States, amici have enacted laws regulating abortion and have experienced the benefits of allowing “legislative bodies” to “draw lines that accommodate” the “competing interests” that abortion presents. Given that experience, amici States are firmly committed to ensuring that citizens nationwide may decide for themselves how to regulate abortion. Even more, amici have a substantial interest in the proper development of both privacy and equal-protection jurisprudence. Amici submit this brief to ensure that those constitutional principles are not construed to eclipse the will of the people.
In October, the Georgia Supreme Court issued an order reinstating the heartbeat law that saves babies from abortions.
That followed a judge’s ruling declaring the state’s heartbeat law unconstitutional. The law protect unborn babies who have a detectable heartbeat.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney issued a decision declaring Georgia’s 2019 Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act or LIFE Act unconstitutional. McBurney’s decision comes after a 2023 Georgia Supreme Court decision that allowed Georgia’s heartbeat law to stand as the underlying case continues.
The high court put McBurney’s ruling on hold at the request of Republican state Attorney General Chris Carr, whose office is appealing.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice John J. Ellington argued that the case “should not be predetermined in the State’s favor before the appeal is even docketed.”
Clare Bartlett, executive director of the Georgia Life Alliance, applauded the ruling.
“There’s no there’s no right to privacy in the abortion process because there’s another individual involved,” Bartlett said. She added: “It goes back to protecting those who are the most vulnerable and can’t speak for themselves.”
In 2023, the Georgia Supreme Court determined that the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs was controlling and that Georgia’s LIFE Act was constitutional.
Most murders occur “in private.”
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