This story was updated at 3:39 pm.
A federal court has ruled Georgia’s restrictive abortion law should be allowed to take effect.
Once implemented, Georgia will ban most abortions at about six weeks, before most people know they’re pregnant.
In a separate order, the court issued a stay on a previous injunction holding up the law, meaning the state can begin enforcing the new abortion rules now.
The law has been tied up in litigation since Republicans passed it in 2019. But now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, judges for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decided the legal challenge is moot.
“Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org makes clear that no right to abortion exists under the Constitution, so Georgia may prohibit them,” Chief Judge William Pryor wrote in the ruling.
The law bans most abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, with exceptions when the mother’s life is at risk and, after filing a police report, in cases of rape and incest.
“Today’s decision by the 11th Circuit affirms our promise to protect life at all stages,” Republican Gov. Brian Kemp told reporters at the Georgia Capitol today. “We are overjoyed that the court has paved the way for implementation of Georgia’s LIFE Act.”
“This cruel abortion ban would deny our patients the right to make decisions about their own pregnancies, bodies, and futures,” wrote Kwajelyn J. Jackson, executive director of Feminist Women’s Health Center, one of the organizations challenging the law. “We won’t stop fighting on their behalf.”
The law also grants legal rights to embryos, known as “personhood.”
In updated legal briefs filed last week, the ACLU and a coalition of groups fighting the law in court acknowledged their case for tossing the law entirely no longer held up. But they pressed the court to strike down the law’s personhood provisions, calling them “vague.”
The court did not agree – and ruled the entire law is constitutional.
Additional legal challenges are now expected in state courts – as supporters of reproductive rights argue Georgia’s state constitution contains stringent privacy protections that conflict with the new abortion law.
Read the full decision below.
WABE’s Jess Mador and Rahul Bali contributed reporting to this story.
